Posted on 08/11/2016 8:04:36 AM PDT by Wolfie
DEA decides not to loosen restrictions on marijuana, keeping it schedule 1 (with heroin)
After years of anticipation, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has decided whether it will remove marijuana from its harshest legal classification: Nope.
The decision means marijuana will remain schedule 1, a category that includes other drugs like heroin and LSD, and is ranked higher than schedule 2, where cocaine and meth remain.
Many advocates hoped marijuana would be rescheduled to schedule 2, particularly to unlock more research into the drug’s medical value. The DEA, however, said it would unlock more research through other means — specifically, by allowing more growing facilities for studies, undoing the University of Mississippi’s current monopoly status as the only federally legal pot grower.
The classification doesn’t mean the government thinks marijuana is more dangerous than cocaine or meth, or equally dangerous to heroin. It means that marijuana, like other schedule 1 drugs, is perceived by the federal government to have high potential for abuse and no medical value. Schedule 2 drugs, like cocaine, still have high potential for abuse, but they also have some acknowledged medical value.
It’s only once you get to schedules 3, 4, and 5 that a drug is deemed to have lower potential for abuse (like anabolic steroids and Xanax) — but these classifications also require that a drug has some acknowledged medical value.
Still, the decision denies a largely symbolic victory to marijuana legalization advocates. But it’s also a fairly obtuse decision — one rooted more in the federal government’s highly technical scheduling system than the question of whether marijuana really has medical value.
This isn’t the first time the DEA refused to reschedule marijuana — and this time, it seems to have used the exact same reasoning it used several times over the past few decades: There’s not enough evidence that pot has medical value.
Remember: The key to changing a drug from schedule 1 to the other schedules is finding that it has medical value — not whether it has lower potential for abuse or non-dangerous uses. So if there isn’t enough evidence to show a drug has medical value by the DEA’s standards, a drug remains schedule 1.
So far, no studies have demonstrated the criteria that the federal government typically requires for medicines. Specifically, no studies have proved marijuana’s medical efficacy in controlled, large-scale clinical environments, nor have any studies established adequate safety protocols for marijuana. And marijuana’s full chemical structure has never been characterized and analyzed.
There have been some studies showing marijuana has medical benefits, particularly for pain and muscle stiffness. But these studies haven’t been large enough to meet the threshold the DEA and other federal agencies, such as the FDA, require to prove a drug has medical value — by proving its worth in controlled, large-scale clinical trials.
But one reason there isn’t enough scientific evidence to change marijuana’s schedule 1 status might be, in fact, the drug’s schedule 1 status. The DEA restricts how much pot can go to research. To obtain legal marijuana supplies for studies, researchers must get their studies approved by HHS, the FDA, and the DEA — a costly, time-consuming process.
Changing marijuana’s schedule, in other words, is a bit of a Catch-22: There needs to be a certain level of scientific research that proves marijuana has medical value, but the federal government’s restrictions make it difficult to conduct that research.
To address those issues, the DEA hopes to allow much more research into pot in other ways. For one, it’s increased the amount of pot grown for research over the past few years, and it plans to continue doing so. Crucially, it also plans to let more people and facilities grow marijuana for studies — aside from University of Mississippi, the only federally legal grower right now.
That could significantly open up research access to pot — including potentially higher-quality marijuana and different strains of the drug, which the University of Mississippi doesn’t currently meet demands for. But the effects of the changes remain to be seen.
For legalization advocates, the DEA’s decision to not reschedule marijuana comes as a big symbolic loss. But the possible policy implications of rescheduling seem fairly small.
Drug policy experts, such as Mark Kleiman, have long said that rescheduling marijuana to schedule 2 — as advocates hoped the DEA would do this time around — wouldn’t have much of an effect. Schedule 2 substances typically require a prescription to be distributed, and the state-legal marijuana dispensaries and retail outlets don’t work through traditional prescriptions (they distribute “recommendations” for medical marijuana), so even rescheduling may not open up access. (Cocaine and meth are schedule 2, and they’re definitely not easily legally available, after all.)
Still, if the federal government acknowledged pot’s medical value through a schedule 2 classification, advocates hoped it would make federal agencies far more receptive to paying for and approving medical research into pot. But the DEA hopes its other steps will unlock far more research instead.
There would be some effects on policy, such as allowing state-legal marijuana businesses to deduct certain taxes, if marijuana was reclassified to schedule 3 or lower. But that’s extremely unlikely: Schedule 3 and lower drugs need to have some medical value and not meet criteria for “high potential for abuse.” Since marijuana is widely used recreationally, it’s a lock-in for “high potential for abuse,” keeping it at schedule 1 or 2. (If alcohol and tobacco weren’t explicitly excluded from the scheduling system by law, they would also very likely be schedule 1 or 2 for this same reason.)
One way around this is Congress could unschedule or reschedule marijuana by itself. But again, that’s unlikely.
The real victory from rescheduling, then, would largely be symbolic. At a time when most Americans support legalizing marijuana, and more states are legalizing the drug, a federal decision to potentially relax its restrictions on marijuana would validate that the country really is moving in a direction where pot will be more accessible and legal.
But the DEA’s decision denied that symbolic victory, leaving it to the next review — in as long as many more years — to see if anything changes.
The ruling, issued in 1988 by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis Young "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling," determined: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care."
Young continued: "It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record."
Judge Young concluded: "The administrative law judge recommends that the Administrator conclude that the marijuana plant considered as a whole has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II [of the federal Controlled Substances Act]."
The schedule is so retarded. They declare heroin has no medical value except most of the prescription painkillers are basically heroin. Then they leave cocaine and meth at “some” medical value even though they don’t actually have any medical use (unless you count diet pills). The whole WOD is filled with bizarre self justifications.
So does that mean there will be an indictment against Malia shortly?
Yes, well. Let me know when the DEA does anything to actually help anyone with any disease who is requesting to be included in an experimental or early clinical trials medication to alleviate pain or advance a disease to being cured or in this case, to do anything for people with neurological diseases. I can tell you from my experience wealthy people will and do at this time get these drugs without any problem. It’s just we who are impecunious that continue to beg for relief.
I’m growing a big crop of methamphetamine in the back yard. I wonder if I have enough room to put some crack plants around? Maybe if I put them in flowerpots and placed them out on the window sill...
I swear, all the heroin and cocaine I planted last year didn’t do ANYTHING. I watered them, let them get plenty of sunlight, and NOTHING. $10,000 shot to hell.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”
I’ll take this quote by pedophile/pot smoker Allen Ginsberg and turn it around on him.
I don’t remember the 60s, ergo I must have lived it .
Marijuana is an awful drug that takes the ambition away from people and does, despite rumors to the contrary, lead to stronger stuff. The other problem I see is it leads, for not a few, to psychosis.
Keep it illegal.
(s) Hey, Dave’s not here maaannn. You gonna eat those chips?(/s)
I believe there is a distinction between marijuana and THC, because THC has been studied widely and used as medicine.
Marinol. does what the potheads claim only more efficient and safer.
But this is ridiculous. Weed just is not that destructive-—far less so than alcohol. Silly to put it on a plane with heroin.
...
Did you read the article?
Right-o!
The DEA seizes Tens of Millions of dollars every year which then is distributed to local police departments that rely on it for budget funding.
It’s all part of our cognitive dissonance disfunction gov’t shakedown racket.
States legalize pot, yet the federal gov’t does not.
Good for me, yet not for thee.
BTW: I am admantly anti-drug use, and have NEVER tried it.
RE: “The DEA has precisely one interest at stake: maintaining power, and rescheduling pot won’t do that”
Yes. It shouldn’t be on a “schedule” at all. Is alcohol?
Marinol. does what the potheads claim only more efficient and safer.
...
Even though the article doesn’t say so, I’m pretty sure Marinol isn’t a schedule one drug. The real reason I believe marijuana isn’t being reclassified is that research on entire plants for medical purposes is difficult and rarely done.
DEA agents depend on the ‘war on drugs’ for a living, no surprise there.
Pot is a huge money-maker for the DEA. They’ll never willingly relax their control of it. The DEA is one of the most corrupt agencies of the U.S. government, and that’s saying something.
Alcohol has a simple chemical structure, has been researched and is used medicinally. Are you sure you read the article?
Question: Why does the DEA have any latitude in determining the schedules at all? Isn’t that a legislative thing?
Neither am I, but I think it's worse to give legitimacy to the idea that the federal government can illegalize them — simply put, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the power to declare drugs to be illegal. You could argue about inter-state commerce, but we've already seen how the courts equate interstate and intrastate commerce… even to the point where 'commerce' is not a needed factor.
And, if you want to go w/ precedence: we had to amend the Constitution to allow alcohol prohibition, yet no such amendment exists for other drugs.
Too many government employees getting paid to enforce the stupid laws
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