DEA on Thursday decided not to remove marijuana from the list of the nation’s most unsafe drugs, angering scientists, public officials, and advocates who have argued that the federal government should recognize that marijuana is medically useful.
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“Imagine a product that is in high demand but kept behind a locked door”. In a statement, Gov. Jay Inslee expressed his frustration saying there is not a national standard for medical marijuana.
“People can argue about the pluses and minuses of marijuana, but everyone knows it’s not a killer drug like heroin”, Sanders tweeted August 11, the same day news broke that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) would not be reclassifying marijuana.
As the Washington Post reports, the FDA has never approved whole-plant marijuana as a drug, and it may never do so, since most drugs the FDA approves of are individual chemical compounds, not plants.
For decades, marijuana has been classified as a “Schedule I” drug with “no now accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”, on par with heroin.
Oregon. Sen. Ron Wyden agreed, calling the DEA’s decision to expand research opportunities into marijuana “the one little bit of sunlight here”.
“Marijuana has no now accepted medical use in treatment in the United States”, Chuck Rosenberg, acting DEA administrator, wrote in the denial letter.
It doesn’t matter if your state legalizes some form of marijuana use – Uncle Sam still considers pot a risky substance and the government isn’t softening its stance. Pot, it said, will remain as it has been since 1970 – a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin.
“This is a good day for science”, said Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization. But, as the DEA petition makes clear, it is still illegal under federal law.
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The agency made a decision to not reclassify the substance and still considers it among the most unsafe drugs. But that doesn’t mean cannabis and its extracts are safe for medical use and not prone to abuse, he added.
