U.S. health officials ask DEA to reclassify marijuana following review

NegativeNull@lemm.ee@lemm.ee to News@lemmy.world – 260 points –
U.S. health officials ask DEA to reclassify marijuana following review - UPI.com
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It's really bizarre the cops and bureaucrats apparently get to decide law to this extent.

Well get used to it as the Supreme Court has begun to lay down the precedent needed to completely do away with Chevron deference.

In other words, they're doing away with the authority that gives federal regulatory agencies their purview to set regulations. You know, the public servants who have dedicated their lives/educations/careers/etc. to a field of study?

They're replacing those decisions with ones made by judges and politicians.

I much prefer "bureaucrats" (literally just another word for those public servants) make those decisions rather than billionaires and politicians.

good. Enforcement should not decide law. that is a clear conflict of interest, in their favor. For an extreme example, you absolutely don't want a police officer deciding citizen's rights.

So you're okay with a politician with no knowledge, process, expectations, or regulation in the area in question making things like medical decisions based only on political lines for you instead of a bureaucracy of beurocrats and medical professionals who dedicate their lives and careers to solving these problems?

How does this make any sense?

These organizations literally formed because politicians are incompetent towards these problems, and gathering of experts are required to evaluate, developer effective process, and then solve for them.

Damn that's a big strawman

It's not a strawman, it's literally what is happening in the US right now. It's called Regulatory Capture.

No, that's exactly what dropping Chevron would mean. Judges get to step in on any decision by a regulatory body. Right now, they are mostly barred from doing so beyond making sure procedure was followed and is within their purview.

I'm not sure I understand. Do you mind explaining your position?

I'm guessing they mean the DEA shouldn't both decide drug classification and enforce those same classifications.

That can be fixed by other means, though, such as by giving the FDA classification rights that the DEA then enforces. Killing Chevron deference would only make things worse; the court now gets to decide and enforce.

The flip side is that more progressive judges can also second guess decisions. EPA says that PFAS is fine and we're not going to regulate it? The court could step in on that. FCC says net neutrality doesn't need to exist? The court could step in on that.

Killing Chevron only makes sense for conservatives if they think they will own the courts indefinitely. They probably thought they would during the Trump Administration, but he lost the last election, and the Supreme Court massively overstepped with abortion rights and caused their side a whole bunch of new problems. They may not be so sure of their ability to capture the judicial system as they were a few years back. A lot depends on how the next election pans out.

It has some trade-offs, the same rules allow the DEA and ATF to make rules but also allows things like the EPA to function. It really is a double edged sword.

Your comparison is EPA, an agency of environmental subject matter experts, so for drugs, which is a health issue, it should be a health agency. DEA is law enforcement. It’s letting cops decide policy when it should be an agency of subject matter experts writing evidenced-based policy.

I'm just saying it's the same rules that give them the power to decide on enforcement. Also all of them are enforcement agencies. The EPA does have federal agents that have the power to arrest. The EPA decided to have less cops in their agency because it is not the nature of their agency. The DEA and ATF decided to have more cops in their agencies because it is the nature of their agency.

Sounds like a problem with their specific implementations rather than the rules that allow them to exist. I wonder if competent legislation could fix that.

Yeah the main trade off is federal organizations have become so determinate that pretty soon, and it's come close already, they're just gonna support a dictator enable their internal politics.

This just isn't true. Federal agencies are made up of regular people who work a regular job for mediocre pay, and a dictator is much more likely to do away with that job (or even worse, as we've seen historically. Purges aren't just a fun way of saying "vacation").

Republicans have even said in the recent past (Rick Perry comes to mind, but pretty sure Trump has said similar) that they will do away with major regulatory agencies if they're elected (such as FDA, EPA, DOE, etc). What do you think happens to all of those workers when a Republican decides to shut down their agency? They're out of a job.

So no, they don't support it. They just don't really have any say in it either way.

You've never talked to a cop.

Cops make up s very small percentage of government employees.

Doesn't matter, that was just an example. People get "institutionalized" in both government and corporate positions, the difference is the corporate ones have little power over the general public, next thing you know you have government representatives running around trying to make peoples lives hell for making clotted cream. If that sounds like a weird example, it is, definitely.

I don't give a fuck about cops.

The federal government is the largest employer in the US. What % of those do you think are cops?