Clinton and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, have said they’d allow states to make the calls on regulating marijuana, following Obama’s lead.
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In any given year, NIDA sends shipments of marijuana to a small handful of researchers, usually eight or nine, but sometimes as many as 12, a DEA memo stated.
25 states and Washington D.C. Have passed laws allowing for some sort of medical marijuana use. “And the ability to (ship product) across state lines will allow us to scale much more easily”.
Twenty-five states have sanctioned some forms of marijuana use for medical purposes. Marijuana stays in the most restricted class of drugs, with heroin and LSD, despite a request from the governors of Washington and Rhode Island and advocacy efforts by many others. In documents released Thursday, DEA acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg declared: “The known risks of marijuana have not been shown to be outweighed by specific benefits in well-controlled clinical trials that scientifically evaluate safety and efficiency”.
The DEA however, did not conclude the benefits of marijuana offset the consequences in its announcement.
For the first time since 1988, both major party’s nominees – Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump – say that they have never smoked or experimented with marijuana (without inhaling).
“Marijuana is already being used for medical purposes in states across the country, and it has the potential for even further medical use”, Maya Harris, a senior policy advisor to Clinton’s campaign, said in a statement, reported by The Denver Post. “One can approach this with some degree of caution without being blind to the data that exists”.
Dr. Jeffrey Reynolds, a drug addiction specialist, more studies need to be conducted on the long-term effects of marijuana use.
The decision comes in response to two petitions asking the DEA to reconsider the drug’s schedule one classification.
Legal status of marijuana in the United States.
Reams says the government is way behind the people on this issue. “We haven’t had a chance to have those conversations”, Grant said.
But the real silver lining in the DEA’s latest actions is revealed in a separate decision created to expand the production of research-grade cannabis for FDA-approved clinical studies. The university has an exclusive contract with the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to provide the nation’s entire research supply, according to the DEA.
Such research could result in medications derived from marijuana that would treat conditions without a “high”, Wergin said.
Buried in the wave of today’s bad news following the DEA’s announcement that it would continue to consider cannabis among the most harmful and unsafe substances known to man was a most encouraging nugget.
Marijuana is in the most restrictive category under federal drug control laws.
Legal marijuana businesses have difficulty finding banks that will work with them, also due to concerns about breaking federal law. This is evidence that the administrative process for rescheduling cannabis is broken and unworkable.
“This decision is based on whether marijuana, as determined by the FDA, is a safe an effective medicine, and it’s not”. In California, an initiative is on the November ballot to completely legalize recreational marijuana. The Aug. 11, 2016 decision, coincidentally, also ensures that the agency will continue to rake in billions of federal tax dollars each year to suppress production of and access to medical marijuana nationally.
It’s just a political mess that the DEA doesn’t want to have to deal with, Kranz said.
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U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden said the decision “just files in the face of the will of OR voters”, who have voted to approve not just medical marijuana but recreational use as well.
