Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of 3-Methoxyphencyclidine (1-[1-(3-methoxyphenyl)cyclohexyl]piperidine) in Schedule I

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <SUBAGY>Drug Enforcement Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>21 CFR Part 1308</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. DEA1146]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of 3-Methoxyphencyclidine (1-[1-(3-methoxyphenyl)cyclohexyl]piperidine) in Schedule I</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Drug Enforcement Administration proposes placing 3-methoxyphencyclidine, including its salts, isomers, and salts of isomers, an arylcyclohexylamine hallucinogen, in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. This action is proposed to enable the United States to meet its obligations under the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. If finalized, this action would impose the regulatory controls and administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions applicable to schedule I controlled substances on persons who handle (manufacture, distribute, reverse distribute, import, export, engage in research, conduct instructional activities or chemical analysis with, or possess), or propose to handle 3-methoxyphencyclidine. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be submitted electronically or postmarked on or before July 10, 2025. Interested persons may file written comments on this proposal in accordance with 21 CFR 1308.43(g). The electronic Federal Docket Management System will not accept comments after 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the last day of the comment period. Requests for a hearing and waivers of an opportunity for a hearing or to participate in a hearing, together with a written statement of position on the matters of fact and law involved in the hearing, must be received on or before July 10, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons may file written comments on this rulemaking in accordance with 21 CFR 1308.43(g). To ensure proper handling of comments, please reference “Docket No. DEA1146” on all correspondence, including any attachments. • <E T="03">Electronic comments:</E> The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) encourages commenters to submit all comments electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal, which provides the ability to type short comments directly into the comment field on the web page or attach a file for lengthier comments. Please go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the online instructions at that site for submitting comments. Upon completion of your submission you will receive a Comment Tracking Number for your comment. Submitted comments are not instantaneously available for public view on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . If you have received a Comment Tracking Number, your comment has been successfully submitted and there is no need to resubmit the same comment. • <E T="03">Paper comments:</E> Paper comments that duplicate electronic submissions are not necessary. Should you wish to mail a paper comment <E T="03">in lieu</E> of an electronic comment, it should be sent via regular or express mail to: Drug Enforcement Administration, Attn: DEA Federal Register Representative/DPW, 8701 Morrissette Drive, Springfield, Virginia 22152. • <E T="03">Hearing requests:</E> All requests for a hearing and waivers of participation, together with a written statement of position on the matters of fact and law asserted in the hearing, must be filed with the DEA Administrator, who will make the determination of whether a hearing will be needed to address such matters of fact and law in the rulemaking. Such requests must be sent to: Drug Enforcement Administration, Attn: Administrator, 8701 Morrissette Drive, Springfield, Virginia 22152. For informational purposes, a courtesy copy of requests for hearing and waivers of participation should also be sent to: (1) Drug Enforcement Administration, Attn: Hearing Clerk/OALJ, 8701 Morrissette Drive, Springfield, Virginia 22152; and (2) Drug Enforcement Administration, Attn: DEA Federal Register Representative/DPW, 8701 Morrissette Drive, Springfield, Virginia 22152. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Terrence L. Boos, Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section, Diversion Control Division, Drug Enforcement Administration; Telephone: (571) 362-3249. As required by 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rule may be found in the docket for this rulemaking at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> In this proposed rule, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposes to schedule 3-methoxyphencyclidine (1-[1-(3-methoxyphenyl)cyclohexyl] piperidine; 3-MeO-PCP) in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), including its salts, isomers, and salts of isomers whenever the existence of such salts, isomers, and salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Posting of Public Comments</HD> Please note that all comments received in response to this docket are considered part of the public record. DEA will make comments available for public inspection online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Such information includes personal identifying information (such as your name, address, State or Federal identifiers, etc.) voluntarily submitted by the commenter. In general, all information voluntarily submitted by the commenter, unless clearly marked as Confidential Information in the method described below, will be publicly posted. Comments may be submitted anonymously. The Freedom of Information Act applies to all comments received. Commenters submitting comments which include personal identifying information (PII), confidential, or proprietary business information that the commenter does not want made publicly available should submit two copies of the comment. One copy must be marked “CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION” and should clearly identify all PII or business information the commenter does not want to be made publicly available, including any supplemental materials. DEA will review this copy, including the claimed PII and confidential business information, in its consideration of comments. The second copy should be marked “TO BE PUBLICLY POSTED” and must have all claimed confidential PII and business information already redacted. DEA will post only the redacted comment on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> for public inspection. For easy reference, an electronic copy of this document and supplemental information to this proposed rule are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Hearing or Appearance; Waiver</HD> Pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 811(a), this action is a formal rulemaking “on the record after opportunity for a hearing.” Such proceedings are conducted pursuant to the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Interested persons, as defined in 21 CFR 1300.01(b), may file requests for a hearing in conformity with the requirements of 21 CFR 1308.44(a) and 1316.47(a), and such requests must: <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  5 U.S.C. 551-559. 21 CFR 1308.41-1308.45; 21 CFR part 1316, subpart D. </FTNT> (1) state with particularity the interest of the person in the proceeding; (2) state with particularity the objections or issues concerning which the person desires to be heard; and (3) state briefly the position of the person with regard to the objections or issues. Any interested person may file a waiver of an opportunity for a hearing or to participate in a hearing in conformity with the requirements of 21 CFR 1308.44(c), together with a written statement of position on the matters of fact and law involved in any hearing. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  21 CFR 1316.49. </FTNT> All requests for a hearing and waivers of participation, together with a written statement of position on the matters of fact and law involved in such hearing, must be sent to DEA using the address information provided above. The decision whether a hearing will be needed to address such matters of fact and law in the rulemaking will be made by the Administrator. If a hearing is needed, DEA will publish a notice of hearing on the proposed rulemaking in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Further, once the Administrator determines a hearing is needed to address such matters of fact and law in rulemaking, he will then designate an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) to preside over the hearing. The ALJ's functions shall commence upon designation, as provided in 21 CFR 1316.52. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  21 CFR 1308.44(b), 1316.53. </FTNT> In accordance with 21 U.S.C. 811 and 812, the purpose of a hearing would be to determine whether 3-MeO-PCP meets the statutory criteria for placement in schedule I. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Legal Authority</HD> The CSA provides that proceedings for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of the scheduling of any drug or other substance may be initiated by the Attorney General (delegated to the Administrator of DEA pursuant to 28 CFR 0.100) on his own motion. 21 U.S.C. 811(a). This proposed action is supported by a recommendation from the then Assistant Secretary for Health of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition, the United States is a party to the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971 Convention), February 21, 1971, 32 U.S.T. 543, 1019 U.N.T.S. 175, as amended. Procedures respecting changes in drug schedules under the 1971 Convention are governed domestically by 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(2)-(4). When the United States receives notification of a scheduling decision pursuant to Article 2 of the 1971 Convention indicating that a drug or other substance has been added to a schedule specified in ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 56k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━