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Cite as: 546 U. S. 243 (2006)
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Syllabus interest” requirement, but 21 CFR § 1306.04 was adopted in 1971. That the current interpretation runs counter to the intent at the time of the regulation’s promulgation is an additional reason why Auer deference is unwarranted. Pp. 256–258. (c) The Interpretive Rule is also not entitled to Chevron deference. The statutory phrase “legitimate medical purpose” is ambiguous in the relevant sense. However, Chevron deference is not accorded merely because the statute is ambiguous and an administrative official is in volved. A rule must be promulgated pursuant to authority Congress has delegated to the official. The specific respects in which the Attor ney General is authorized to make rules under the CSA show that he is not authorized to make a rule declaring illegitimate a medical standard for patient care and treatment specifically authorized under state law. Congress delegated to the Attorney General only the authority to pro mulgate rules relating to “registration” and “control” of the dispensing of controlled substances, 21 U. S. C. § 821 (2000 ed., Supp. V), and “for the efficient execution of his [statutory] functions,” 21 U. S. C. § 871(b). Control means “to add a . . . substance . . . to a schedule,” § 802(5), following specified procedures. Because the Interpretive Rule does not concern scheduling of substances and was not issued under the required procedures, it cannot fall under the Attorney General’s control authority. Even if “control” were understood to signify something other than its statutory definition, it could not support the Interpretive Rule. Nor can the Interpretive Rule be justified under the CSA’s registration pro visions. It does not undertake the Act’s five-factor analysis for deter mining when registration is “inconsistent with the public interest,” § 823(f), and it deals with much more than registration. It purports to declare that using controlled substances for physician-assisted suicide is a crime, an authority going well beyond the Attorney General’s statu tory power to register or deregister physicians. It would be anomalous for Congress to have painstakingly described the Attorney General’s limited authority to deregister a single physician or schedule a single drug, but to have given him, just by implication, authority to declare an entire class of activity outside the course of professional practice and therefore a criminal violation of the CSA. It is not enough that “public interest,” “public health and safety,” and “Federal law” are used in the part of the Act over which the Attorney General has authority. Cf. Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U. S. 471. The first two terms do not call on the Attorney General, or any executive official, to make an independent assessment of the meaning of federal law. The Attorney General did not base the Interpretive Rule on an application of the five-factor test generally, or the “public health and safety” factor spe cifically. Even if he had, it is doubtful that he could cite those factors
