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.
Only Congress can make laws, and cannot delegate. How can the DEA legally do such a thing? Because We The Sheeple never do anything about the illegal actions of our government.
There is the irony, or something: A lot of the benefit of pot (the anti-inflammatory qualities, the relaxing properties, the palliative properties) are absolutely not related to THC.
All those above-mentioned things are a product not of THC but rather the class called terpenes, which already occur in plants that we use every day.
For instance, the thing in pot that relaxes people is a terpene called “Linalool”, and it is the exact same thing in lavender that relaxes people. It is a perfectly legal substance.
You can grow poppies. It’s just illegal to score the pods and collect the sap.
While I certainly support State laws against various domestically produced drugs, and laws forbidding the importation of others, there is no delegated power given the federal to regulate agriculture or manufacturing within the jurisdiction of any State. Just as with federal gun control laws: the vast majority of application of these federal regulations are not constitutional.
I do not want to dispute a fellow FReeper, but your statement is absolutely not true. Marinol is a poor substitute. The trope "marinol does it better" is false.
That’s going to piss off all the libertarian drug advocates. And you don’t want to piss them off because they’ll... they’ll forget to... they won’t remember to...
head for the nearest bar when their tour of duty is over
Well maybe whenever they want to.....Part of the/an investigation.....
It’s a Drug stuff agency. The more “stuff” they have to chase, the more money they make. Regardless if they’re justified. It’s all about money.
Except you can't really control the dosage. Some patients complain Marinol leaves them unable to even hold a conversation because they are basically forced to take more than they need or want. Not to mention the expense.
Shouldn’t our elected representatives in the House and the Senate, have the final say regarding this subject ??
Then the President could sign the bill, or veto the bill.
Maybe you want to reply to #29.
You have states legalizing it and these guys continue to make their major concern. Pot is bulky. It grows practically anywhere. Easiest to detect with dogs and by odor if a car is pulled over. Pot is the DEA gravy train.
Too much money to be made by the judicial industrial complex.
And yet, what is the gross interdiction rate? 10%?
No government really wants to “win” this war.
It also is a dangerous principle to look to an item (or absence thereof) for what should be sought in the realm of personal responsibility and, yes, divine help.
“This is stupid government in action.
Not even allowing medical research of A PLANT THAT GROWS THAT GOD MADE.”
It’s all about who profits. Right now, it’s the lawyers and private prison industry.
Where were you when I was planting that heroin? That was $7.500 you could have saved me!
Maybe I can grow those poppies you’re talking about and change the man-cave blueprints over to plans for an opium den. And make a pot garage while I’m at it.
Yep, definitely stuck on stupid.
No. See Tenth Amendment.
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