The DEA’s decision ignores the public will and patients’ experience with the medical benefits of marijuana, says Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, which advocates for removing marijuana from the drug scheduling restrictions.
Advertisement
In a letter dated August 11 and sent to Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raymond, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and petitioner Bryan Krumm, Acting Administrator for the DEA, Chuck Rosenberg explained the decision.
The ruling reaffirms what folks who have been following this issue closely already know, said Jeffrey Zinsmeister, a senior fellow at the University of Florida Drug Policy Institute and an executive vice president at Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM).
Marijuana reform will go to the ballot in a number of states this November, including California and Nevada, where regulators have proposed taxing cannabis and opening up its cultivation to businesses under a “controlled system”. Drug policy has been one area in which the Obama administration has been disappointingly conservative, although it has at least established a policy of nonintervention in states where marijuana and/or medical marijuana have been legalized. “Schedule I” means it will continue to be classified as a drug with “no now accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”, which prevents doctors from legally prescribing it. It has maintained this position since before Judge Francis Young ruled in 1988 that marijuana is mis-classified, however an appeals court later ruled that the DEA gets to set its own timeline, so here we are 28 years later, and the agency still does not comply with the Young ruling.
Despite being fully legal in many states and decriminalized in many others, marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) (2ndL) speaks about medical Marijuana and how it could possibly help four-year-old Morgan Hintz (R) who suffers from a rare form of epilepsy, as U.S. Sen.
“There is no evidence that there is a consensus among qualified experts that marijuana is safe and effective for use in treating a specific, recognized disorder”, the report added. They warn against caving to pressure from business interests that would profit from legalization or expanded sales. Other Schedule I drugs are heroin, LSD, meth and peyote.
“We’ll just proceed as normal”, said Dawn Thomas, a health department spokeswoman.
Thursday’s announcement was another blow to those hoping the federal government would change pot laws.
The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect for States (CARERS) Act (S. 683, H.R. 1538), introduced in 2015, which in addition to rescheduling cannabis, would allow states to establish medical cannabis access laws and product safety regulations without interference by the federal government, and remove current obstacles to research. (About half of the registered users receive disability benefits or Medicaid, and pay a $20 application fee.) They then register with one of the dispensaries, where they must make their purchases, and are allowed a maximum supply of 2 ounces in a month. OR legalized pot past year.
New guidelines were issued for manufacturing edible forms of the drug previous year. Those petitions will be reviewed by a newly appointed committee.
Advertisement
This post has been seen 4 times.
