The DEA could downgrade marijuana’s federal status on the list of Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug alongside heroin after the Drug Enforcement Administration declared it would make its decision to revise the drug’s cataloging later this year. The DEA addressed the marijuana’s revision of its federal status through a letter to lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy signed the letter, as well as the DEA’s directors. If approved, this would have an enormous impact on the already growing market for medicinal marijuana.
The federal status of marijuana is currently alongside heavy drugs such as heroin and LSD. The Schedule 1 drug category states the drug has no medical use and it shows great risk for abuse, yet marijuana has been already proven to have medicinal properties.
One of the U.S. Senators who made their opinion known publicly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, claimed the DEA’s decision on whether to change marijuana’s federal status from a Schedule 1 drug to a less serious type of drug is a step in the right direction. Warren released the statement on Thursday as Warren added her concern on how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would approach medicinal marijuana research.
The drug differs from LSD and heroin on plenty of aspects, but the main one could be that marijuana is a natural plant, while the other drugs require much processing and adding of chemicals. Although this doesn’t mean people should use weed, with medical marijuana laws getting passed in over 23 states across the U.S. changing its federal status could lead to a nationwide legalization.
Marijuana’s federal status downgrade could be profitable
The allegations from the DEA to decide whether weed should be degraded on the current Controlled Substances Act’s list also implies that, if approved, marijuana’s use could be expanded towards more productive areas, including research. Considering many legal drugs have taken greater death tolls than marijuana, the DEA’s decision planned for midyear doesn’t seem to have many risks.
It’s worth mentioning how the war against marijuana has affected the United States as a country, as well as a world economy. Although official reports haven’t been updated, the amount of money spent on raids, Special Forces, and the incarceration of over 25 percent of people nationwide reaches up to billions of dollars each year.
Even though the proposals of medicinal marijuana laws has been passed in 24 states across the United States, including Washington D.C., authorities keep stepping up their efforts against drug cartels and drug-related crimes. The possible downgrade of marijuana’s federal status could not only help legalizing the drug once and for all but also help reduce the war on drugs.
Source: The Washington Post
Cannabis should not be scheduled at all, let alone be in Schedule I.
It is absurd that the Federal Government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance along with Heroin. It is classified in a more dangerous category than Cocaine, Morphine, Opium and Meth. The three required criteria for Schedule I classification are:
“1) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.”
The dependence rate of cannabis is the lowest of common legal drugs including tobacco, caffeine, alcohol, and many prescription drugs. More important, cannabis does not cause the kind of dependence that we typically associate with the term, like that of alcohol or heroin. It is more similar to that of caffeine, with less symptoms. Cannabis dependence, in the very few who develop it, is relatively mild, and usually not a significant issue or something that requires treatment, unless of course it is court ordered. [Catherine et al. 2011; Lopez-Quintero et al. 2011; Joy et al. 1999; Anthony et al. 1994;]
“2) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”
Cannabis has been used as medicine for thousands of years. Despite great difficulty in conducting medical cannabis research, the medicinal efficacy of cannabis is supported by the highest quality evidence. [Hill. 2015] Already 76% of doctors accept using cannabis to treat medical conditions even though it is still illegal in most places. [Adler and Colbert. 2013]. Cannabis is able to treat a wide range of disease, including mood and anxiety disorders, movement disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury, to cancer, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, glaucoma, obesity/metabolic syndrome, and osteoporosis, to name just a few. Cannabis is able to do this partially through its action on the newly discovered (thanks to cannabis) endocannabinoid system and the receptors CB1 and CB2 which are found throughout the body. [Pacher et al. 2006; Pamplona 2012; Grotenhermen & Müller-Vahl 2012].
“3) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.”
On September 6, 1988, after two years of hearings on cannabis rescheduling, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young concluded that:
“Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man…. Marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. 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.”
Relatively speaking cannabis is a safe drug [Iversen L. 2005]. The evidence is is clear, cannabis does not belong in Schedule I [Grant et al. 2012]. It does not meet any one of the three required criteria.
Please help bring end to this senseless prohibition. The organizations below fight every day to bring us sensible cannabis policies. Help them fight by joining their mailing lists, signing their petitions and writing your legislators when they call for it:
MPP – The Marijuana Policy Project – http://www.mpp.Org/
DPA – Drug Policy Alliance – http://www.drugpolicy.Org/
NORML – National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws – http://norml.Org/
LEAP – Law Enforcement Against Prohibition – http://www.leap.Cc/
SOURCES:
–Adler and Colbert. Medicinal Use of Marijuana — Polling Results. New England Journal of Medicine. 2013.
–Anthony et al. Comparative epidemiology of dependence on tobacco, alcohol, controlled substances, and inhalants: Basic findings from the National Comorbidity Survey. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. 1994.
–Catherine et al. Evaluating Dependence Criteria for Caffeine. J Caffeine Res. 2011.
–Grant et al. Medical marijuana: clearing away the smoke. Open Neurol J. 2012.
–Grotenhermen F, Müller-Vahl K. The therapeutic potential of cannabis and cannabinoids. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2012. Review.
–Hill K. Medical Marijuana for Treatment of Chronic Pain and Other Medical and Psychiatric Problems. A Clinical Review. JAMA. 2015. Review.
–Iversen L. Long-term effects of exposure to cannabis. Curr Opin Pharmacol. 2005. Review.
–Joy et al. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Institute of Medicine. 1999.
–Lopez-Quintero et al. Probability and predictors of transition from first use to dependence on nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine: results of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). Drug Alcohol Depend. 2011.
–Pacher et al. The endocannabinoid system as an emerging target of pharmacotherapy. Pharmacol Rev. 2006. Review.
–Pamplona FA, Takahashi RN. Psychopharmacology of the endocannabinoids: far beyond anandamide. J Psychopharmacol. 2012. Review.