The DEA Will Soon Decide Whether it Will Reschedule Marijuana

[Logical]

The government currently places marijuana in the same category as heroin and LSD.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says it will make a decision in the coming months that could prove to be a watershed moment for the burgeoning legal marijuana industry.

In a memo to lawmakers this week, the DEA announced plans to decide “in the first half of 2016” whether or not it will reschedule marijuana, according to The Washington Post. Cannabis is now listed under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug, a categorization it shares with other drugs, such as heroin and LSD, which the U.S. government defines as “the most dangerous drugs” that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Advocates for marijuana legalization have long argued that the drug should be rescheduled, considering marijuana’s relative safety when compared to a drug like heroin, which caused roughly 11,000 overdose deaths in 2014, according to the National Institutes of Health. The argument for rescheduling marijuana also revolves largely around the drug’s potential for medical use, as 23 states have already legalized medical pot to treat a variety of maladies—from cancer to chronic pain—and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy even admitted last year that “marijuana can be helpful” for certain medical conditions.

Should the DEA decide to reschedule marijuana, bumping it down with supposedly less dangerous drugs such as cocaine (Schedule 2) or ketamine (Schedule 3), the move would likely open the door for expanded research of cannabis’ potential for medical applications. As it stands, the government has an exclusive contract with a University of Mississippi research lab to grow marijuana for the purpose of medical research, and the DEA notes in its letter that the government supplied an average of just nine researchers with marijuana for research purposes per year between 2010 and 2015.

More at: http://fortune.com/2016/04/06/dea-decision-marijuana-reschedule/

[ViseGrip]

1. It's time to get the federal law to unify more with majority state laws now.

[Major Nikon]

2. It doesn't need to be rescheduled

It needs to be removed from the schedule.

[Ed Suspicious]

4. This.

[Logical]

6. I 100% agree. nt

[Hydra]

10. +1000

And it will be soon, despite what they may want. The support for the drug wars is waning.

[ArcticFox]

12. Right on!

[Rex]

17. Yep, exactly.

[Feeling the Bern]

19. Absolutely agree 100%

In fact, the entire scheduling system needs to be done away with. It takes discretion out of law enforcement.

[Recursion]

23. True, but rescheduling keeps us within our treaty commitments under the Single Convention

Which itself needs a lot of re-working.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Zactly.

[Ed Suspicious]

3. What is alcohol scheduled as? Talk about high potential for abuse.

[Logical]

5. No kidding. It is a scam honestly. nt

[Major Nikon]

7. The other obvious question is why was cannabis scheduled to begin with?

[ArcticFox]

13. to tamp down dissent of course

But you already knew that

[meow2u3]

25. Actually, cannabis was outlawed for the same reason other drugs were

Racism. Pure. And. Simple.

Cannabis has remained illegal because the government has been captured by the pharma companies, and we can't have pot, which is cheap by comparison, competing with expensive drugs that don't work.

[Oldenuff]

8. Since when does the DEA set policy?

I thought they were the enforcement arm of "some" drug laws..(except for some high level drug traffickers that they allowed to operate of course).


I must have missed the memo that gave them authority to set policy.

Obama should do an executive order..I mean if he was really a President of the people and all.

Or Maybe Hillary will do it if the universe turns it's back on us and she get's elected.

[Logical]

9. Hillary is way on the wrong side of this issue. nt

[Major Nikon]

11. It's not that simple

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act

[Oldenuff]

22. I didn't know that..

Thanks for the link.

[Duppers]

14. Zactly!

Me thinks this is poor journalism.

This: Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970

Congress and Nixon.

[AllyCat]

15. Legalize. Not reschedule. LEGALIZE!

[mountain grammy]

16. Must be why the two old anti pot war horses are getting moving

The two oldest members of the U.S. Senate convened a four-witness hearing Tuesday to discuss concerns about marijuana legalization, but chose not to invite anyone supportive of the policy or with direct experience administering recreational pot laws in Western states.

Drug reform advocates denounced the hearing as a poorly informed waste of time, and senators most supportive of reforming federal marijuana laws did not attend.

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the hearing of the Caucus on International Narcotics Control last month after a Government Accountability Office report said the Justice Department wasn’t documenting its monitoring of enforcement guidelines laid out by the Obama administration in 2013.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/oldest-us-senators-accused-of-holding-biased-marijuana-hearing

[Rex]

18. They are still scared of the hippies. If anyone needs to smoke a bowl it is those two.

[Feeling the Bern]

20. Here is American Marijuana policy in two movies

"REEFER MADNESS"

"MARIHUANA: THE DEVIL'S WEED"

Try not to laugh too hard. Especially, in Reefer Madness, when they call someone a "hopeless Marijuana addict."

[U4ikLefty]

21. I hope they get the facts and watch this important film