Federal Bureaucrats Say We Can't Reschedule Marijuana Because of How It's Scheduled
Cannabis has long been classified as having "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use." That makes it harder to study and, therefore, harder to reclassify.
Last week, President Joe Biden announced that he would pardon all Americans federally convicted of simple possession of marijuana. The announcement was a welcome, though limited, shift in the U.S. government's seemingly unending war on drugs. Biden additionally called on governors to follow suit in their respective states and grant clemency to the vast majority of offenders convicted under state laws. He also encouraged Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra to review marijuana's classification under federal law.
But that shift may be easier said than done thanks to the age-old problem of federal bureaucracy.
Currently, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, indicating "a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision." In his announcement last week, the president noted that this puts it in the same category as heroin and a more restrictive category than fentanyl.
In 2015, the last time the government assessed marijuana's classification, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and HHS recommended keeping it at Schedule I. The assessment included, among other factors, "the scientific literature on whether marijuana has a currently accepted medical use"—a tall order since Schedule I status makes it much more difficult to study in the first place.
The Washington Post reported today that "such an evaluation—the first initiated by a U.S. president—is made all the more difficult due to tight restrictions on research into marijuana." Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a research institute within the National Institutes of Health, told the paper, "It's something that we constantly communicate: We really need to figure out a way of doing research with these substances."
In other words, as Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute tweeted, the government "can't research whether marijuana should remain a 'Schedule I' substance bc of govt restrictions on… researching Schedule I substances."
So the govt can't research whether marijuana should remain a "Schedule I" substance bc of govt restrictions on… researching Schedule I substances. Makes sense. https://t.co/d9nl4sqVNf pic.twitter.com/ySdciQOhn5
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 10, 2022
Even just changing the classification of weed to Schedule II, the same as fentanyl, would at least open it up to medical research, a change advocated by such groups as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians. Further, under Schedule II, it could even be prescribed by doctors similar to the way painkillers are now.
In an unfortunate catch-22, marijuana's current classification status will likely prolong the process of reclassifying it.
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“Our hands are tied”.
“It’s not our fault”.
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Arbitrary regulation is a feature not a bug.
And Reason is willing to play along to avoid admitting that Biden is refusing to do what POTUS is clearly capable of doing.
>>In an unfortunate catch-22, marijuana’s current classification status will likely prolong the process of reclassifying it.
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I was going to say similar. If you think Schedule III and lower is some sort of gateway to legalization, be aware that we’ve hauled famous, wealthy, pro-athletes and Olympians and their pharmacologists into court and before Congress multiple times for possession/use of those substances. Drugs that have decades of objective and well-documented therapeutic use and, maybe more critically, no evidence of use disorders on par with their scheduling.
Stop taking horse paste.
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I’m, at this moment, very confused about scheduling in general. What is its purpose? They mention that Fentanyl is Schedule 2, but that’s awfully illegal to distribute too and so it doesn’t mean much in that regard.
Seems like Doctors have been prescribing weed across the country for awhile now, but maybe that’s just a the federal/state lack of cohesion we’ve had going for some time.
Technically the doctors are breaking the law but the feds don’t want to rock the boat too hard. They may be forced to actually do something rather than use it as a campaign issue.
They may be forced to actually do something rather than use it as a campaign issue.
*sniggers* Did you see the other Reason article where non-citizens bringing 50+ lbs. of marijuana across the border is somehow relevant to a discussion of personal possession?
Skimmed it. Saw the author and felt reading it wasn’t worth my time. I know her schtick.
carrying a bale of weed into New Mexico (there’s a New Mexico?) is good cardio
What I want to know is who the hell is still smoking Mexican weed?
No, the doctors are not breaking the law. A prescription is just writing, and they still have freedom of “speech”. A pharmacist filling the prescription would be breaking the law.
Try again. If you’re the prescriber you are legally liable for that prescription.
Nobody is writing prescriptions for medical marijuana (except for some fed doctors working under compassionate use programs). State doctors make ‘recommendations.’ They can’t prescribe a schedule 1 substance legally and risk their DEA license to prescribe other medicines if they do. So they don’t. And no state law requires a prescription…either a recommendation or referral. There is a difference and its an important one.
Which is why doctors can get dragged into court for “over prescribing” completely legal opiates for pain patients.
I think the pharmacies also get dragged into that mess, so the fed stance is basically to throw everyone involved in jail if they can.
I know, shocking.
Fentanyl is commonly used in hospital settings, though — that’s one of the differences that is enabled by not being on Schedule I.
As other commenters pointed out, this looks like a huge exercise in making excuses to not change anything. What’s to keep the bureaucrats from declaring that marijuana has a lower potential for abuse?
The purpose is to deny having lied while still robbing and killing. In 1937 all informed participants knew that laws against weed and coke were written in NYT “cocaine negroes” and “reefer madness” collectivism and that neither was addictive. Only opiates and their imitations cause the duress of withdrawal sickness. But admitting that is admitting past lying, pseudoscience and wrongdoing, hence the scheduling smokescreen. This smokescreen pleased tobacco and alcohol lobbyists, who hate competition as the epitome of evil.
Cocaine is physically addictive. The late P.J. O’Rourke, who ought to know (his college major was streetcorner pharmacology), considered cocaine the most addictive of the drugs he was on.
So one GOP alcoholic’s hearsay is evidence on which to base the initiation of deadly force? I could win your hundred dollars against my thousand in a live experiment before Congress… except for the scheduling bullshit which says settled superstition must not be tested. Tell me about the Shroud of Turin…
Cocaine is Schedule II as well. I once had a card for a couple of months while undergoing aftercare for sinus surgery, where the sinuses were cleared of blood clots after application of topical cocaine. The card was in case I ended up having to have a blood or piss test.
Huh, watching an interview with Piers Morgan– Morgan BEING interviewed, not the other way around.
To his credit, he essentially admits that cocktail party invites drove his reporting.
More specifically, he acknowledges that accolades from swanky, influential people, pats on the back etc. were “intoxicating” and drove his reporting in a particular direction.
First they came for gay Superman…
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2022/10/10/dc-comics-canceling-gay-supermans-solo-run-after-failure-to-sell-n640605
That title is misleading, as it’s Superman’s son not Clark Kent. The first few issues weren’t particularly good though. Probably because there is an increasing need for comics to be not just progressive, but didactic. Kind of a big frustration with a lot of newer Woke stuff in that it needs to be sure you didn’t miss the point, and so it becomes rote and focused on forcing it. While Wildstorm has had a gay superman married to a gay batman for like 25 years now, and people still mostly like Apollo and Midnighter.
No one wants Superman to be gay. No one wants a gay guy super hero period. It was an incredibly dumb idea.
Somebody, somebody very online, does. But I digress.
My main point is that the comic was bad and didactic from what I saw. My guess is if you had a more interesting superhero who was also gay that it would have worked out. People would have shit talked online, but that doesn’t mean anything because at all moments everything is being shit talked about online. Someone is writing a diatribe against the original Human Torch (the robot who set Hitler on fire) as we speak.
It was very forced and boring on their part though. I agree.
A gay superhero would be great, but Superman already has an established persona, and as is pretty clear, he’s hopelessly in love with Lois Lane who is decidedly a woman. Don’t go messing with history to satisfy your contemporary mores and desires.
As noted above, this isn’t Clark Kent, it’s Jon Kent (Clark and Lois’s son)
But your reaction does raise a good point, and one I think is at least as responsible for the title’s failure. While some heroes (like Flash or Green Lantern) have had multiple characters carry the mantle over the years, others (like Batman and of course Superman) have pretty much always been the same character. I think people are unwilling to accept a Superman who isn’t Clark Kent/Kal El. It probably would have gone over better if Jon had remained Superboy instead.
Vertigo owned by DC has had gay characters for 30 years. Those characters and stories were interesting for a number of reasons.
This shit is just boring.
I think that’s the main thing. Invent a new character who is gay and make some good stories for him. That would be fine. Trying to rewrite everything so every established character is some kind of oppressed minority is lazy and annoying.
Marvel made Northstar from Alpha Flight gay a long time ago. But readers had suspicions about the character long before the editorial decides was made.
That’s the problem with all diversity/woke bullshit, it can’t happen organically they have to force it and then make a big deal about it. Hey, instead of making a big deal about hiring a black singer to play the little mermaid, why not talk about how talented she is rather than her skin color, I’m betting less people would have been upset. Instead of trumpeting a gay Superman market a Superman who happens to be gay. Don’t define the character before hand by their diversity score.
Excellent, see the role of Q in “No Time to Die”. Yup, he’s gay, but that’s just background noise in the story. Now, perhaps, a spinoff franchise could have the mild-mannered geek turn out to have a secret life involving knocking off some bigtime Putin clone, and then finishing up the movie with a scene doing the deed with some Russian guy who he saved along the way – typical Bond stuff.
Or think Sam Adama in Caprica – certainly not someone to have on your bad side.
But for cryingoutsakes, leave Superman alone!
Well, it’s his some, not Clark Kent. Still, the whole thing is overt virtue signaling. And hamfisted at that. Which is never good storytelling.
‘Son’, not ‘some’.
Oops, I guess this was covered already.
Too bad. I was looking forward to SuperMA’AM IT”S SuperMA’AM, the first trannie superhero.
Make it a comedy movie.
Lemme guess, super ma’am is a lawyer?
You just know that would work well.
Public defender. Big heart, but has never won a case.
This comic canceled itself.
They should retcon it that his deviant sexuality was the product of some kind of red kryptonite poisoning. Then have his father set up some kind of high tech conversion therapy at the Fortress of Solitude.
That would send the wokies into orbit.
So it’s sorta like qualified immunity. We can’t rule against the cops in this situation, because nobody has ruled against the cops in this situation.
Feature not a bug
I think this is the first Lancaster article I’ve read that didn’t irritate me. Our pro-drug war bureaucracy will always find ways around loosening restrictions. That’s why the true onus here is on Congress to amend the Controlled Substance Act.
And while we’re waiting for pigs to fly, citizens and state legislatures will continue to pass marijuana legalization at the state level. Maybe when Ohio, Pennslyvania, and Florida legalize marijuana Congress will finally change the federal law.
9A says: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Looters interpret “rights” to mean empowerment to use deadly force (see KKK States Rights rhetoric). The first 10 Amendments really are a Bill of Immunities, because rights are moral claims to freedom, repeat, freedom to act. Freedom to act is much the opposite of freedom to coerce or kill. Conservatives say “do unto others…” The original verbiage said “do not do unto your fellow…”
I guess all those stoners will just get sleepy and go home?
But demonstrations are a drag and besides we’re much too high. And it really wouldn’t interest…
Remember that day the people amended the U.S. Constitution granting the feds authority for Food and Drug Administration?
Yeah; me neither..
F’En Nazi’s.
Isn’t it about time to restore the USA and end the FDA?
At the very least have the Supreme Court uphold the U.S. Constitution on the matter.
Or at least greatly rein in the FDA and reduce their mandate significantly. Same with the DoE. Or get ridof it entirely and move oversight of nuclear materials to the DoD or something.
“Same with the DoE.”
Energy or education?
Yes.
In this case, you mean DEA, not FDA
Aren’t the various agencies part of the Executive branch, with the President as the chief executive? So why can’t he tell them to fix the problem; reclassify based on generations of common experience, i.e. pot is not heroin!, and then do the studies.
Part one of the scientific method is observation, and that doesn’t have to involve multimillion dollar programs and tools, it can be simple observation (and common sense).
Besides which, where is the Constitutional authority to ban any substance? When the tea-totallers wanted to bank alcohol, they were at least honest enough to realize that they had no Constitutional authority to do so, short of an Amendment to the Constitution.
This.
I’d have thought a libertarian magazine would’ve at least seen fit to question the entire legal sham that is the Controlled Substances Act and the ‘schedules’ it created. Where in the Constitution does the federal government derive such powers?
I’m not a lawyer (maybe one can chime in), but my understanding is that, fearing the anti-Vietnam war protests and the counterculture, congress passed it. Nixon, taking inspiration from the ‘rousing success’ of New York’s harsh Rockefeller Drug Laws, then signed off on it. It is upheld via absurdly stretched interpretations of that great federal catch-all, the Interstate Commerce Clause.
As GroundTruth points out, give the Prohibitionists credit for following the Constitution when trying their failed experiment – Amendment XVIII to enact and Amendment XXI to repeal. The Drug War is not just Constitutionally dubious, it’s far more onerous to liberty and costlier, to boot. So, where do the feds get the authority to ‘schedule’ anything, and why doesn’t a libertarian publication deign to mention (or outright harp on) this sizable discrepancy? Playing by their rules only entrenches their disregard for the Constitution and liberty and ensures defeat.
You hit it square when you mentioned “costlier”. Its been a few years now, but last I saw the annual budget for the DEA alone was $Bn65. Would not surprise me if it is now above $Bn100. Far too many FedGov goons are sucking at that teat to ever get the CSA repealed. And those numbers are only direct budget for the agency itself. The collateral costs probably at least double the total amount sucked down by the whole “war on drugs” meme. Which is more accurately labelled “the ENDLESS war on SOME drugs.
The framework is a result of two signed and ratified treaties, which under Article VI of the Constitution thus constitute the “law of the land” on a par with constitutional provisions.
The strategy is good. Republicans have only coercion to sell, and hatemongering–with against latinos, blacks queers, foreigners & hippies replacing Jews–is the traditional vehicle for driving coercion and murder. Suddenly another repeal movement, such as brought FDR to office and excluded fascists for five consecutive elections, is at hand. Just as the Liberal Party’s repeal plank enabled Dems to win, Libertarian repeal planks are set to again banish the economy-destroying half of the Looter Kleptocracy for 2 decades.
Surely there are people in the rest of the world who study the devil weed?
Precisely so.
There are, but neither the DEA nor the FDA accepts foreign studies. To my mind, that indicates bureaucrats that should be:
1. Fired and banned from all public employment, including working for government contractors.
2. Publicly whipped.
3. Branded “IDIOT” on the forehead.
Welcome by some, opposed by others. Most people don’t give a f*ck either way.
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Except that it has accepted medical uses.
The issue is not that S1 makes it hard to research, the issue is that the government ignores research that doesn’t support it’s political objectives.
I mean, how much shit was given people over covid treatments that weren’t masks and vax?
I thought the VA had data on treatment of PTSD with cannabis. Doesn’t that count?
It only counts when the political class wants it to count.
They have better data on the effectiveness of LSD and psilobycin.
The problem is that the maneuver space of the government is limited by Article VI of the Constitution, as the schedule system is defined by two treaties we have signed and ratified. Short of disavowing everything in the treaties – and there are some things in them that we really DON’T want to dump – Congress had little room to maneuver. It isn’t, as Agammamon tries to argue, the preferences of the political class, but matters of limits on room for action within the institutional framework of the Constitution.
Name one thing “we” got suckered into defining vice as crimes by that is not suicidal superstition. At the 1929 Crash, nobody but the USA had national bans on beer or other drugs. The collapse became global because the USA exported prohibitionist confiscations to other fractional-reserve banking systems and wrecked them as well. This, mind you, out of eugenic altruist collectivism and “building a new race” per Bert Hoover’s inaugural speech.
All drug laws violate the NAP and are immoral.
Or Congress could just . . . enact legislation prohibiting the FDA from scheduling marijuana as a dangerous drug.
Would defunding that gang of looters suffice?
The US is bound by two treaties in this area, however. Unless Congress disavows both of them – and there are some parts that we probably DON’T want to dump – then under Article VI of the Constitution the government is bound to the requirements of the treaty. Disentangling from them is not a simple task.
Austria disentangled from the Nazi Anschluss about 2 weeks after the National Socialist surrender. That war was fought thanks to American prohibitionists seeking to globalize Imperial Chinese approaches to bans by beheading and asset-forfeiture looting. All the interwar German banking crises followed U.S. prohibition exports until finally Big Pharma pumped up the Hitler campaign as a last-ditch buffer.
This will probably be legalized nationwide via a constitutional lawsuit citing “Citizens United” and the 14th Amendment.
For example: Willie Nelson’s marijuana company is a “corporate person” entitled to 14th Amendment equal treatment as alcohol companies and nicotine companies.
If a liquor company can sell their product in a different state, so can Willie!
The 21st Amendment is in 2 parts. 1. says the 18th is repealed, which is all that was needed to protect the economy from the asset-forfeiture depredations of mystical looters. 2. Says the whole thing can be brought back by superstitious States piecemeal. State prohibition always wrecked the economy of the dry state to the benefit of wet neighbors. China’s prohibition caused silver to flow out by beheading all who tried to bring it back on presumption of guilt. Now it’s the communist slave pen Christianofascists want here.
Whoa, Dude. Take your meds
Ah, the masked fed resorts to ad hominem and intimidation. How original!
Worth noting that the three conditions for schedule one are connected by “and”. All three must be true. High potential for abuse is arguably true, depending on how you define “abuse”. The other two are clearly not true, and we’ve known for a long time. There are obvious medical uses now which are common. And it is very safe to use (excepting the smoking part which is easy to avoid if you are worried about that).
First learn what it means to be on the business end of these “Assassin Of Youth” witch hunts. Robert Platshorn, a gifted entrepreneur, activist and businessman helped Colombia escape being dragged to ruin by gringo prohibition and asset forfeiture “laws.” He describes El Caribe smuggling as she is, then the federal prison rat’s maze of violent, insane murderers, muther-stabbers and father-rapers & tax dodgers, the innocent are forced to room with. The Black Tuna Diaries is the book that exposes Christianofascist prohibitionism as the GOP seeks to preserve it.
Just a wild and crazy thought.
Congress can pass a law removing the devil weed from schedule one.
No studies needed, just the balls to vote like their constituents (mostly) want.
One particular bar is that the US is a signatory to the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961. The Controlled Substances Act is the implementing legislation for US compliance with treaty obligations. It would be tricky to disentangle from those treaties, as there are aspects we probably want to remain in place – and as long as we are a signatory, the US is bound by Article VI of the Constitution to comply.
Or just stop regulating pot on all levels of government and move on to things that matter.
Or vote libertarian until THAT once again the thing that matters–at least to non-females.
Every drug on Schedule I has a medical use. The Catch-22 is not that you cannot conduct research on them (a friend is a pharmacology professor who DOES conduct federally-funded research on clinical applications of psylobicin and LSD, and a lot of work has been conducted on cannabis and derivatives), but that they cannot come into generally accepted medical practice when they are banned from medical practice by the schedule.
The real question should arise around safety – PCB is probably not realistic to see used in practice, nor heroin (although it is no more dangerous than fentanyl). If there is a high potential for abuse and clear evidence of lack of safety, by all means leave it on Schedule I. If not, move it to schedule II, which is where cocaine, amphetamine, etc. are currently listed.
IMHO, due to biases and stereotypes around marijuana, I don’t expect to see cannabis or most derivatives moved by FDA even though they are already widely prescribed! My estimate is that LSD and psilobycin, which in low doses are showing great promise for treating PTSD, severe anxiety, and severe depression, will be the first drugs, if any, to be moved to Schedule II.
See? There is an infinite series of these masked, lying, equivocators summoned by pelf and boodle already stolen in exchange for perjury and prevarication. The sound response is to cast leveraged, law-changing spoiler votes till those outweigh the eugenic superstition of 1912. Looter politicians that lose serve notice on the next in line for election. Televangelist Trump and snotty Shillary still bet on the initiation of force. Ani who demand the death sentence for nonaddictive enjoyables in their first term seldom get a second.
The Democrats don’t want to legalize it at the Federal level. Currently, ATF Form 4473 asks the user whether they are an illegal drug user, and remind the applicant that marijuana is still illegal under federal law. Hence, this is a form of gun control. Or the ability to convict a legal user of a felony and deny them their 2nd Amendment Civil Rights.
Medical Marijuana already exists. Idiots.
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