Whether Congress delegated authority to the Attorney General to define 'effective prescription' under the Controlled Substances Act and whether a prescription outside generally accepted medical standards can be deemed unauthorized

QUESTIONS PRESENTED 1. Did Congress delegate authority to the Attorney General to define what constitutes an “effective prescription” or an “authorized” distribution of narcotics under 21 U.S.C. § 841 of the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”)? 2. May a court uncritically defer to administrative regulations when defining authorization for purposes of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)’s criminal prohibitions, or must courts conduct an independent interpretation of the statute to ascertain its meaning? 3. Does stepping outside of “generally accepted standards of practice” render a prescription unauthorized under the CSA, even where it is issued for a medical purpose? 4. Does 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)’s mens rea attach to the statutory requirement of authorization, such that the government bears the burden of proving that a defendant knew a given prescription was legally unauthorized, or does the statute’s mens rea attach to regulatory interpretations of 21 U.S.C. § 829’s prescription requirement?