DEA Assigns Specific Schedule I Listing and Drug Code to HHC

WASHINGTON – The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has issued a final rule that formally lists hexahydrocannabinol (HHC) as a Schedule I controlled substance with its own dedicated drug code.

The notice, published in the Federal Register, establishes the specific entry for the compound 6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6a,7,8,9,10,10a-hexahydro-6H-benzo[c]chromen-1-ol (HHC) in the list of Schedule I hallucinogenic substances. It assigns the substance DEA drug code 7220.

HHC was already considered a Schedule I substance under the broader category of cannabinoids, controlled under drug code 7370. The separate listing now allows the DEA to establish an aggregate production quota and grant individual manufacturing and procurement quotas to DEA-registered manufacturers of HHC – a function that had previously been administered under the broader cannabinoids code. In plain terms, the agency is building out the federal infrastructure to track HHC production with more precision, the kind of infrastructure that typically precedes more formal enforcement attention.

The timing of the rule traces back to a decision in international drug policy. In March 2025, the 68th Session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to add HHC to Schedule II of the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Following formal notification from the UN Secretariat in June 2025, the DEA informed the Department of Health and Human Services of its intent to list HHC specifically in Schedule I under U.S. treaty obligations. HHS responded in December 2025, confirming there are no approved drug applications for HHC and concurring with the direct listing.

One detail absent from the DEA’s notice: when the Commission on Narcotic Drugs took that vote, the United States was the only country to abstain. That abstention did not ultimately slow the domestic listing process, but it adds a layer of nuance to the government’s public posture on HHC’s international status.

The DEA’s HHC rule is best understood not in isolation but as part of a sequential tightening that has been underway for several years. The 2023 agency letter on HHC’s synthetic nature, this week’s Schedule I codification, the November 2025 congressional redefinition of hemp, and the advancing 2026 Farm Bill all point in the same direction: the legal and regulatory gray zone that sustained the hemp-derived cannabinoid market is contracting – systematically and on a documented timeline.

For businesses still holding HHC inventory or distribution agreements, the rule closes one of the last procedural arguments available that HHC’s federal status was somehow unresolved. It was not. It is now documented in the Federal Register with its own drug code.

The harder question, as the November 2026 deadline for the broader hemp product ban draws closer, is how federal enforcement will actually be resourced and applied. The FDA’s definitive list of permitted cannabinoids, mandated by the November 2025 legislation, was expected to be finalized by February 2026, but enforcement guidance is still being developed. That gap between legal clarity and operational enforcement has defined this category from the beginning.

What has changed is that the DEA is no longer leaving any room for ambiguity about where HHC stands. The code number is assigned. The clock on the broader market is running. The industry has roughly six months to determine which side of that line its products will land on.