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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They are now seeing how profitable the plant is, so they want to change the narrative. Don't be fooled.

Edit: The reclassification will just put the plant in its due place, before its reputation was tarnished by the war on drugs.

They’re just trying to not only have it be a cash business. The banks want a portion of that monies.

If we're actually following the scheduling guidelines, can we do psychedelics next?

I mean, they probably will. They've got to offer fucking something other than "I'm not a literal fascist who will black bag and torture you like Trump." It's not particularly effective to be like "I know your lives are fucking terrible out there, but I'm not gonna do a god damned thing to really improve them, because why should I have to, my opponent is fucking bonkers and I'm going to hold him over your head abusively, dangling him as a threat that you'll be punished under unless you vote for me."

Far easier to threaten us with the spectre of fascism than actually fucking do anything to improve things or, you know, stop fascism. However, enough folks in the Democratic party are waking up to the public not actually responding well to this abuse, and see that they're enabling fascism to be able to lean on it as a danger that only they can thwart. So they gotta start giving something, and drugs are an easy one.

I forgot the exact details but that's slowly becoming a reality in the states. I think the FDA was re reviewing mushrooms for use fighting against PTSD

Mushrooms are in phase three trials and have been for awhile. That doesn't help a lot of other plants that were misclassified under Nixon, several of them used in religious contexts such as Ayahuasca (DMT) and Peyote (mescaline).

Essentially, all of these medicines need to be reviewed because scheduling was based on political motivations and not any understanding of their pharmacology. They were being used as medicine by medical doctors (psychiatrists) when Nixon scheduled them. This was a great injustice to anyone with mental health issues and direct violence towards groups already using psychedelics (rather medicinally, spiritually, or recreationally). And this injustice and violence continues to this day.

We all know Nixon was a crook and that the drug war is a crock of shit. Yet, we continue locking people up and denying access to medicine (or spiritual food depending on your outlook) because we don't like the substances people choose to have a relationship with. We're complicit in his violence everyday we let it continue as though it's justice.

Anyway, I hope the DEA reschedules cannabis. It would be a great first step. But we have to recognize that it's just one step and not the end goal. The drug war needs to end. And we can't be content with only weed being looked at.

Yeah, and cannabis has numerous well known and well studied medical applications. Has been common knowledge for years. And yet...

DEA: Ok, it's reclassified.

Indiana: Cool. We'll make it 5 years in prison for smoking a joint.

I hate this state.

Wisconsin is gonna be the last state to legalize because we're the Alabama of the fucking north. Your 5th DUI probably has lesser consequences than getting caught holding here.

You're the Alabama of the north? Have you ever heard the Hoosier accent? And both Dan Quayle and Mike Pence come from Indiana. Also, we once tried to legislate pi. And not to the correct value of pi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill

Lol fair points, tho we do have quite an accent up here dontchyaknow? But I guess you have Gary, IN too and all we have is a bunch of serial killers.

Wisconsin is a purple state that's gerrymandered to hell. Zero movement on any progressive agenda for over a decade. The progressives here have gotten dejected and tend to overexagerate the problem.

Not that it's all great. It's just not "Wississippi".

Meanwhile, yesterday I walked into a store and bought THC vape cartridges legally. There was even an armed cop in there for security. I said hi to him on the way in.

I know "just move" isn't a real solution, but man I would never live in a state that isn't solid blue ever again. After growing up in a "purple" area of a red-leaning state, the difference is pretty insane.

Yall might have something akin to fair elections this year. Maybe.

Your purple state may actually be purple soon.

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.

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?

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 expect reclassification to happen just before the election.

Can the DEA even reclassify drugs? All the DEA could do, in theory, is decriminalise and not prosecute - which they're kind of doing already.

It's up to Congress to write laws. Maybe the FDA, in this case.

Criminalization is a multi-million dollar industry and greed is more powerful than our laws.

US health officials ask DEA to jeopardize their own jobs

The DEA has basically ignored cannabis for years now. Opioids will keep them employed, don't worry.

Exactly. They're basically asking them to do something the DEA can't do - change the law. What the DEA can do is prioritise what they're prosecuting and decriminalise weed, which they more or less unofficially have been doing for a few years now.

Abolish the DEA, legalize all drugs, and put education/treatment programs in place to help people. Repair lives instead of destroying them. That should always be the goal.