The PSA Wednesday NewsWire: February 4th, 2026

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration has announced its intent to place 2-fluorodeschloroketamine (2-FDCK)—a structural analog of the anesthetic and antidepressant ketamine—into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, effectively banning it. The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register on January 20, would use the DEA’s “emergency scheduling” powers—a fast-track mechanism for substances claimed to pose an “imminent hazard to public safety.”

Critics frame this mechanism as “prohibition by default,” and the 2-FDCK move has drawn sharp rebukes from experts and advocates. They say that by criminalizing a compound with virtually no footprint in the illicit market, the DEA will stymie research that could yield the next generation of mental health treatments.

The DEA’s justification for the “emergency” nature of the ban has come in for particular criticism. According to the agency’s own data, 2-FDCK has been encountered by US law enforcement a grand total of 52 times since 2018.  

“The problem is that the DEA defines what ‘imminent hazard’ exactly means,” Robert Rush, a Denver-based attorney and founder of the Rights and Reason Project, told Filter. “For 2-FDCK, the attorney general stated the drug is ‘widespread in the United States,’ based on only 52 reports over eight years. In a country of 330 million, that’s a reach that borders on the absurd.”

Rush, who has been prominent in challenging the DEA’s attempts to schedule other research chemicals, said the agency is using the emergency provision to bypass the rigor of the standard scheduling process. “They are creating a crisis where none exists to justify a policy that avoids the sunlight of a public hearing.”  

Kat Murti, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the nation’s largest youth-led drug policy reform organization, shares these concerns.  

“The DEA’s move to emergency-schedule 2-FDCK as a Schedule I substance is drug policy by panic, not evidence, and we will pay for it in blood,” she told Filter. “Emergency scheduling sidesteps scientific review and public-health input, replacing them with blunt enforcement tools that have repeatedly proven deadly.”

“We’ve seen this pattern over and over again: Rushed bans create chaos, not safety,” Murti continued. “Placing ketamine analogs into Schedule I will not eliminate use or make communities safer. It will push people toward increasingly unregulated and unpredictable markets, increase the risk of adulteration and overdose, and expose people—especially young people—to arrest, incarceration, and lifelong consequences.”

Unlike the standard scheduling process, which allows for public commentary, scientific hearings and judicial review, emergency scheduling by the DEA essentially bypasses oversight for up to three years.

“The crazy thing about temporary emergency scheduling is that the ability to question its necessity is removed during the temporary period,” Rush noted. “There’s no opportunity to go to court or to have a hearing. After 30 days, it just becomes illegal. If you were a scientist developing an isomer or derivative compound from it, that’s too bad. Your work stops, and your liability begins.”

Of particular concern to the scientific community is that by placing 2-FDCK in Schedule I—the most restrictive class, reserved for drugs with “no currently accepted medical use”—the DEA will also restrict all of its salts, isomers and salts of isomers. This “blanket” approach is liable to freeze research into dozens of potentially beneficial medical compounds, some of which may not even have been fully identified.

The current fight over 2-FDCK is playing out against the backdrop of a recent, high-profile loss for researchers and advocates. In 2024, the DEA moved to ban DOI and DOC, two psychedelic research chemicals, which had between them been cited in over 1,200 National Institutes of Health-funded papers. Though the ban now looks set to go ahead, Robert Rush, working with SSDP, successfully demanded the first psychedelic scheduling hearing at the DEA since the famed MDMA case of 1985.

“The DEA, for too long, has had a rubber stamp in their decision-making processes,” Rush said of the DOI case at the time. “They have not had to defend their actions. I am looking forward to having the DEA defend its decision to criminalize an important research tool that it admits is not being diverted for illicit use. It is time they answered to the American public.”

Murti and SSDP have been vocal about the damage to critical research caused by the DEA’s moves. That’s particularly relevant with the 2-FDCK plan, given that its relative, ketamine, represents one of the few breakthroughs in depression treatment in recent decades.   

“At a time when we face an unprecedented mental health crisis, it is unconscionable for the DEA to claim that harm to research is irrelevant,” Rush said.

Murti and Rush agree that the federal government must pivot away from what they call “reckless prohibition” toward policies that reflect today’s public health needs.

“If policymakers are serious about saving lives from overdose, the federal government must stop expanding emergency prohibition and instead invest in harm reduction, drug checking, evidence-based education and research,” Murti said. “Prohibition enforced through emergency orders is not public health—it’s a policy choice that puts lives at risk.”

Rush also frames the issue as a fundamental question of cognitive liberty—the right of individuals to maintain autonomy over their own mental states. “Restricting 2-FDCK without clear evidence of unique and substantial harm improperly infringes cognitive liberty by criminalizing mental states,” he argued. “Any regulation must be evidence-based, narrowly tailored, and focused on specific harms rather than speculative harms.”

As the DEA moves to finalize the temporary order, the Rights and Reason Project, SSDP and others are aiming, through legal challenges and advocacy, to end the days of “stealth” scheduling.

“They locked LSD, MDMA and psilocybin away, and decades later, we are still fighting to research these drugs with significant therapeutic potential,” Rush said. “Someone needs to fight this reckless prohibition, or we will repeat the mistakes of the past indefinitely.”

Image (adapted) via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

This article was originally published by Filter, an online magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. Follow Filter on Bluesky, X or Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

Until next time,

The Psychedelic State(s) of America Team