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The DEA Is Getting Dragged 'Kicking and Screaming' Into the New World of Marijuana
In April, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said that it would review marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, considered the “most dangerous class” of substances.
While the DEA’s announcement is a positive sign, many drug-policy experts think that it’s unlikely the agency will actually decide to change marijuana’s classification, despite a dramatic shift in public sentiment about the drug.
Marijuana’s position in the top tier of the scheduling system — which organizes drugs by their “acceptable medical use and … abuse or dependency potential” — has endured since the 1970s.
“DEA will carry out its assessment of the FDA recommendation in accordance with the [Controlled Substances Act] … and hopes to release its determination in the first half of 2016," the DEA said in a letter to a group of Democratic senators, first obtained by The Huffington Post.
The DEA’s statement was in response to a letter from Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic senators calling for the federal government to facilitate medical-marijuana research, which the Schedule I classification severely hinders.
Rescheduling marijuana into a different classification wouldn’t undo the prohibition on the drug, but it would likely result in increased access to the drug for scientific purposes. Currently, the University of Mississippi is the only institution licensed to cultivate marijuana for research, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The announcement comes amid a broader reconsideration and embrace of marijuana for medicinal and recreational uses.
2015, 58% of Americans said that marijuana use should be legal. As recently as the mid-1990s, only about 25% of Americans held the same position.
And since California began allowing medical marijuana in 1996, 22 other states and Washington, DC, have followed suit, permitting the medical use of the drug in some form.
Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dea-getting-dragged-kicking-screaming-162211351.html
In April, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said that it would review marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, considered the “most dangerous class” of substances.
While the DEA’s announcement is a positive sign, many drug-policy experts think that it’s unlikely the agency will actually decide to change marijuana’s classification, despite a dramatic shift in public sentiment about the drug.
Marijuana’s position in the top tier of the scheduling system — which organizes drugs by their “acceptable medical use and … abuse or dependency potential” — has endured since the 1970s.
“DEA will carry out its assessment of the FDA recommendation in accordance with the [Controlled Substances Act] … and hopes to release its determination in the first half of 2016," the DEA said in a letter to a group of Democratic senators, first obtained by The Huffington Post.
The DEA’s statement was in response to a letter from Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic senators calling for the federal government to facilitate medical-marijuana research, which the Schedule I classification severely hinders.
Rescheduling marijuana into a different classification wouldn’t undo the prohibition on the drug, but it would likely result in increased access to the drug for scientific purposes. Currently, the University of Mississippi is the only institution licensed to cultivate marijuana for research, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The announcement comes amid a broader reconsideration and embrace of marijuana for medicinal and recreational uses.
2015, 58% of Americans said that marijuana use should be legal. As recently as the mid-1990s, only about 25% of Americans held the same position.
And since California began allowing medical marijuana in 1996, 22 other states and Washington, DC, have followed suit, permitting the medical use of the drug in some form.
Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dea-getting-dragged-kicking-screaming-162211351.html
