“The DEA continues to place marijuana alongside heroin and LSD as drugs with high abuse potential even though the DEA’s own former chief administrative law judge, Francis Young, disagreed with this”, he added. Pot, it said, will remain as it has been since 1970 – a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin. “If the scientific understanding of marijuana changes-and it could change-then the decision could change”, he wrote.
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Members of Congress have called for its reclassification, and on Wednesday, the National Conference of State Legislatures adopted a resolution asking the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule I. The FDA previously concluded that marijuana has “no now accepted medical use in treatment in the United States”, according to National Public Radio (NPR).
Morphine, methamphetamine, cocaine and oxycodone are all Schedule II drugs, “because they have medical applications”, Bostwick said.
“This decision isn’t based on danger”, he said.
The policy change was made following a letter signed by eight senators, calling on the DEA to support more research about the medical benefits of marijuana. The DEA, for example, spent $18 million previous year destroying marijuana plants while people in three states were legally using it for fun.
The feds say there aren’t enough well-executed studies to prove marijuana use is safe, and the DEA did move to facilitate more research, by allowing more schools to grow the plants for study, which is good news for the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California San Diego.
Cannabis advocates have long argued that this arrangement, and the labeling of marijuana as among “the most unsafe drugs” under the Controlled Substances Act, has sharply limited the supply available for research.
It doesn’t matter if your state legalizes some form of marijuana use – Uncle Sam still considers pot a unsafe substance and the government isn’t softening its stance.
The DEA also announced that it would ease restrictions on research of marijuana and its possible use as a medicine. Now the only registered facility is at the University of MS, which has been the single grower registered to supply medical marijuana research for almost 50 years.
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In a letter to the petitioners, the DEA said it had asked the Department of Health and Human Services for a scientific and medical evaluation. This results in major backlogs and delays for the research groups’ studies.
