An employee places marijuana for sale into glass containers at The Station, a retail and medical cannabis dispensary, in Boulder, Colo., Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016.
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The government refused again Thursday to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes, reaffirming its conclusion that the drug’s therapeutic value has not been proved scientifically and defying growing support to legalize it for the treatment of a variety of conditions.
“Marijuana remains a schedule I controlled substance because it does not meet the criteria for now accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, there is a lack of accepted safety for its use under medical supervision, and it has a high potential for abuse”, the DEA said in its response to petitioners who had sought a reclassification of the drug.
WASHINGTON (AP) Marijuana will remain on the government’s list of most highly regulated and unsafe drugs, the Obama administration says, despite growing popular support for the widespread legalization of pot. The administration said that marijuana has no acceptable medical use now and has a huge potential for abuse.
DEA can not reschedule marijuana, Rosenberg said, because an analysis by FDA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (“NIDA”) showed marijuana’s effectiveness in treating medical conditions has not been proven; it has a high potential for abuse; and it lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision.
Some questions about the decision and what it means.
Marijuana will remain illegal under USA federal law, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced Thursday, arguing that the drug’s therapeutic value has not been proven scientifically. Heroin, peyote and marijuana, among others, are considered Schedule I drugs because they have no medical application; cocaine and opiates, for example, have medical uses and, while still illegal for recreational use, are designated Schedule II drugs.
“It is best not to think of drug scheduling as an escalating “danger” scale – rather, specific statutory criteria (based on medical and scientific evidence) determine into which schedule a substance is placed”, Rosenberg wrote.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said he was disappointed with the DEA’s ruling but his state would continue “to maintain a well-regulated, adult-use marijuana system and continue to allow patients to have access for necessary medicinal purposes”.
The agency, however, said that it is taking steps to ensure that the marijuana plants are allowed to grow in certain institutions for the goal of research.
The decision keeps the federal government at odds with 25 states and the District of Columbia, which have passed laws allowing medical use of marijuana to some degree. In 2014 the Treasury Department gave banks permission to do business with legal marijuana operations with conditions, including that they try to make sure that customers complied with state regulations.
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 of the issue.
“Research is the bedrock of science”, he wrote, “and we will – as we have for many years – support and promote legitimate research regarding marijuana and its constituent parts”.
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