DEA pulls certificates for two Colorado doctors in medical marijuana controversy

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/02/06/dea-pulls-doctors-certificates-medical-marijuana/

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has pulled the medicine-prescribing certificates of two Colorado doctors, after those physicians had their state licenses suspended in Colorado over medical marijuana recommendations.

The doctors — Gentry Dunlop and Janet Dean — were two of five Colorado physicians whose licenses the state Medical Board suspended last summer, alleging that the doctors wrote improperly large numbers of medical marijuana recommendations authorizing high plant counts..

Last week, the DEA published a notice in the Federal Register that it had revoked Dean’s certificate of registration, which allows her to prescribe controlled substances. The move was not unexpected, and the DEA’s notice said the revocation was a consequence of the state license suspension, which blocked the doctor from practicing medicine or prescribing medication in Colorado, and not the result of new information.

Late last month, the DEA published a similar notice for Dunlop. Searches of the Federal Register for notices relating to the other suspended doctors turned up nothing.

Four of the suspended doctors — everyone but Dean — filed suit over the suspensions last year. After winning a brief reprieve, a judge in Denver allowed the suspensions to continue while the doctors’ administrative appeals progressed. The doctors appealed the judge’s order; meanwhile, their cases at the Medical Board are also still pending. Lee Rasizer, a spokesman for the state agency that houses the Medical Board, said he could not comment on the cases.

The doctors were each accused of recommending that hundreds of patients be allowed to grow or possess more than the standard six marijuana plants per patient. The doctors say their suspensions were arbitrary, and that all of their recommendations conformed to the law and policy.

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