The DEA’s 26 Questions for Medical Marijuana Registration Applicants

By Ryan Kocot, cannabis attorney licensed in CA, NY & MA. DEA registration and compliance for state-licensed cannabis operators. Call or text 916-572-6445 to set up a free consultation.

The short answer: Marijuana Moment has obtained and published the 26-question list DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division is sending Colorado dispensaries that applied for DEA registration under the new federal medical marijuana pathway. The questions cover ownership and management, products, employee access, suppliers, SOPs, labeling, inventory counts, theft and loss, and disposal. Three things stand out to me. First, this confirms the process is real: apply, get inspected, get follow-up questions in writing while DEA decides your application. Second, the questionnaire leans on state rules, citing a Colorado regulation by section. Third, a few of these questions are traps for the unprepared, because a casual answer could create a federal problem. Below is the full list, grouped the way DEA grouped it, with what I would be thinking about before answering each group. None of this is legal advice, and your answers should go through counsel before submission.

What happened

According to Marijuana Moment’s reporting, after a state-licensed medical dispensary submits DEA’s registration application, DEA personnel visit the facility and then send written follow-up questions. The 26-item list published this week is the version used by DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division, covering Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. Mississippi operators reported similar but not identical questions from the New Orleans division earlier this summer, including items about license transfers, disciplinary history, and security plans that do not appear on the Rocky Mountain list.

That regional variation is itself information. Marijuana Moment’s reporting indicates that field implementation is varying by DEA division, and DEA has not publicly identified a single nationwide follow-up questionnaire. I would therefore treat this published list as a floor, not a ceiling. Prepare for it all: everything on this list, plus your disciplinary history, transfer history, and security posture.

If you read my article on the checklist I would carry if I were a DEA inspector, this questionnaire will look familiar. Ownership and control. Who has access. Records that reconcile. Suppliers. Theft and loss. Disposal. The comparison exercise between what you told the government in your application and how you actually operate is not a theory anymore.

The questions, and how I would be thinking about them

Here’s the list of questions provided by the DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division:

1. What are the name(s) and title(s) of the owners, directors or individuals in an equivalent leadership position in the business, and persons in charge on-site.
2. When was your business established/incorporated?
3. How long have you been operating at your current location? Any previous locations ofoperation?
4. Are there any subsidiaries, parent companies, or related companies doing business as(DBAs)?
5. What is your management structure?
6. What are your hours of operation (e.g., building hours, dispensing hours, office hours,holidays, etc.)
7. What are the specific controlled substances that you will be dispensing (e.g. Marijuana; Marijuana Extract; Naturally derived delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinols)?
8. What are the specific types of products offered (e.g., gummies, extracts, concentrates,tinctures, topical products, oils, flower buds, oil cartridge vapes, dry herb vapes, pre-rolled cannabis cigarettes, etc.)?
9. List all employees who will have physical access to medical marijuana. List the employee names, DOBs, titles, and whether they are full-time or part-time employees.
10. Do you have prior experience with handling controlled substances? If yes, explain.
11. Identify the analytical lab(s) used or testing your medical marijuana products.
12. Do you or any individuals associated with the business hold any other DEA registrationsapplications?
13. Are any personnel granted a Power of Attorney (POA) for the DEA application? If so, please provide a copy of the POA.
14. Will you be growing marijuana?
15. 15. Please identify your medical marijuana supplier(s) to include name(s), address(es), andDEA registration number(s)
16. What is your supplier’s method of shipment and delivery (e.g., common, contractcarriers, 3PL, own carriers)?
17. Will you be ordering marijuana or marijuana products from other states?
18. Will you be ordering synthetic cannabinoids?
19. Will you be ordering marijuana seeds or plants in order to grow at the dispensarylocation?Ordering, Receiving, and Dispensing
20. Provide a copy of your Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) detailing the firm’smanagement and storage of medical marijuana inventory and the sale of medicalmarijuana to patients, pursuant to CCR § 212-3:5-115(B.5).
21. What is your procedure for patient verification (e.g. medical marijuana card, ID)?
22. Please provide a copy of any labeling, packaging, and sealing policies (refer to federal guidelines for medical marijuana packaging pursuant to Title 21 CFR § 1301.13(k)(8)which states that the label of all medical marijuana products shall, when dispensed to or for a patient, contain a clear, concise warning that it is a crime to transfer the drug to any person other than the patient).
23. How often do you conduct an inventory (physical count) of the medical marijuana on-hand?
24. What is your policy for the returns of product to the supplier? (wrong product shipped toMedical Marijuana Dispensary, or wrong strength, etc.)
25. What is your policy for addressing thefts and/or losses of medical marijuana?
26. How is defective (e.g. mold, rot, bug infestation), expired, or discontinued/deadstockmarijuana products disposed of?

Company background (questions 1 through 14)

• Consistency. The ownership answer, the management answer, and the location answer need to match what you filed, exactly. If something has changed since you applied, the answer needs to account for the change. An unexplained mismatch between this questionnaire and your application is how a routine follow-up becomes a longer conversation.
• Question 10, prior experience with controlled substances. This question should look familiar after the DEA registration application. For nearly every operator, the honest answer involves years of handling marijuana under a state license while it sat in Schedule I. DEA knows this; its own application asks a version of the same question. Answer truthfully and precisely, with counsel involved in the drafting.
• Question 14, will you be growing marijuana, is a scope question. A dispensary registration covers dispensing. If cultivation happens at your location under your state license, the answer and its implications for which registration and which form you need is exactly the kind of thing to resolve with counsel before responding, especially with DEA’s manufacturer and other business-type forms still rolling out.

Suppliers (questions 15 through 19)

• Question 15, supplier DEA registration numbers, may produce awkward answers. DEA has not yet posted the promised marijuana-specific forms for manufacturers, bulk manufacturers, distributors, and laboratories; however, DEA has permitted those applicants to use the existing forms in the meantime. Some suppliers may therefore have pending applications but no issued DEA registration number yet. Identify the supplier accurately, state whether a DEA registration has been issued or remains pending, and do not guess or invent a number.
• Question 17, ordering from other states, deserves serious attention. Section 1301.13(k) makes the federal authority subject to the limitations of the underlying state license. States have yet to authorize interstate commerce, so, at a minimum, any answer should acknowledge this limitation.

Ordering, receiving, and dispensing (questions 20 through 22)

Here is the detail I keep coming back to: question 20 asks for your SOPs by citing the Colorado regulation, 1 CCR 212-3-5-115(B.5), which requires medical marijuana stores to maintain written SOPs covering inventory management, storage, and patient sales. And question 22 points to 21 CFR § 1301.13(k)(8), which permits registrants to follow state labeling, packaging, and sealing requirements but also requires the warning specified by 21 U.S.C. § 825(c), where applicable: a clear, concise warning that transferring the drug to someone other than the patient is a crime.

• A federal agency just asked for your state SOP by state regulation number. This is the deference structure of the new rule working exactly as written: the federal registration leans on state compliance. Which means your state compliance program is no longer only a state matter. The SOP you hand DEA is your federal compliance showing. If your SOPs were written to get through an application and do not describe what your staff actually does, that’s a problem.
• The transfer warning is a concrete, checkable item. Pull a dispensed product off your shelf today and look at the label. Either the warning is there or it is not. This is among the easiest federal findings for an inspector to make and among the cheapest for you to fix in advance.

Records and reporting (questions 23 through 26)

• Question 23, how often do you count, assumes you count. If the honest answer is “when something seems off,” you have your project list. A dated, signed reconciliation log turns an inventory discrepancy from a possible diversion indicator into evidence of an operation that polices itself.

• Question 25, theft and loss, needs a procedure. Who notices, who reports, to whom, on what timeline, with what documentation. Staff should be able to follow the procedure in practice; it cannot exist only in the compliance binder.

• Questions 24 and 26, returns and disposal, are documentation questions. Wrong product, wrong strength, mold, expiration, deadstock: the question is not whether product goes back or goes away, it is whether you can show what moved, why, how, and under whose authority, consistent with your state’s rules.

The bigger picture

Apply, get inspected, answer written follow-ups. The process is running now, in multiple states, with regional variation and no publicly identified national standard. Every question on this list is a records, consistency, or discipline question. None of it is exotic. All of it is work that either exists at your operation today or does not.

And one more thing worth saying plainly: your answers to this questionnaire are statements to a federal agency about your controlled substances operation. Treat them as part of your federal registration record, and assume DEA may compare them against your application, your state licensing information, and what investigators observed on site. Draft them the way you would draft a filing, because that is what they are. Get counsel involved before you respond, keep a copy of everything you submit, and make sure the operation matches the answers before the next visit tests them.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Kocot Law advises state-licensed cannabis operators on DEA registration and federal compliance. This article is attorney advertising and general information, not legal advice; reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you have received DEA follow-up questions, consult counsel before responding.