DEA Will Decide On Rescheduling Marijuana First Half This Year

[stromboli]

http://fortune.com/2016/04/06/dea-decision-marijuana-reschedule/

The government currently places marijuana in the same category as heroin and LSD.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says it will make a decision in the coming months that could prove to be a watershed moment for the burgeoning legal marijuana industry.

In a memo to lawmakers this week, the DEA announced plans to decide “in the first half of 2016” whether or not it will reschedule marijuana, according to The Washington Post. Cannabis is now listed under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug, a categorization it shares with other drugs, such as heroin and LSD, which the U.S. government defines as “the most dangerous drugs” that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Advocates for marijuana legalization have long argued that the drug should be rescheduled, considering marijuana’s relative safety when compared to a drug like heroin, which caused roughly 11,000 overdose deaths in 2014, according to the National Institutes of Health. The argument for rescheduling marijuana also revolves largely around the drug’s potential for medical use, as 23 states have already legalized medical pot to treat a variety of maladiesâ€"from cancer to chronic painâ€"and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy even admitted last year that “marijuana can be helpful” for certain medical conditions.

Should the DEA decide to reschedule marijuana, bumping it down with supposedly less dangerous drugs such as cocaine (Schedule 2) or ketamine (Schedule 3), the move would likely open the door for expanded research of cannabis’ potential for medical applications. As it stands, the government has an exclusive contract with a University of Mississippi research lab to grow marijuana for the purpose of medical research, and the DEA notes in its letter that the government supplied an average of just nine researchers with marijuana for research purposes per year between 2010 and 2015.

The government currently places marijuana in the same category as heroin and LSD.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says it will make a decision in the coming months that could prove to be a watershed moment for the burgeoning legal marijuana industry.

In a memo to lawmakers this week, the DEA announced plans to decide “in the first half of 2016” whether or not it will reschedule marijuana, according to The Washington Post. Cannabis is now listed under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug, a categorization it shares with other drugs, such as heroin and LSD, which the U.S. government defines as “the most dangerous drugs” that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Rescheduling could also have a major financial effect on the legal marijuana industry, which some estimates suggest will hit $6.7 billion in sales this year while expanding to nearly $22 billion by 2020. While more and more states have voted to legalize marijuana in some form over the past several years, the drug remains very much illegal on the federal levelâ€"an inconvenient fact for a rapidly expanding industry that has led to a range of issues for marijuana-related businesses, from a lack of banking options to federal tax issues.

My wife with MS has had access to Pot and yes it definitely does alleviate symptoms, from muscle cramps to nausea and also anxiety attacks. Pretty close to a wonder drug in terms of the number of symptoms it affects.

The stupidity quotient of government not withstanding, the reasons to reschedule far outnumber reasons not to. The DEA's attack on Pot is hundreds of million of wasted dollars, several professional organizations and legal organizations are advocating rescheduling, and so on.

But you never know. The stupid is strong in government.

[doorknob]

I'm questioning why it was a schedule 1 drug any how? Are you serious cocaine is considered lower risk then pot! That's a fucking joke any drug addict will tell you. Cocaine way worse then pot! Everything else way worse than pot. I've smoked pot myself and it's tame compared to coke and other street drugs.

I don't see pot as that big of a problem that the DEA makes it out to be. Do some lose control over it? Sure. But the vast majority of people who use pot that I know about do not commit major crimes just to support their habit. I know plenty of people that use it recreationally and function just fine in life with out committing other more heinous crimes for any reason. It's no more addictive or dangerous than alcohol IMHO. Actually alcohol may be more dangerous as it has real potential to make people become violent where as that's pretty rare with pot.

[stromboli]

Richard Nixon. Commissioned a study on it and the summary was that pot was basically harmless. Nixon, a California native that hated the "dirty pot smoking hippies" and wanted to use the pot to stomp on them, had other plans.

He coerced the Republican senator that was in charge of it and told him to demonize the drug so he could get it classified as a Schedule 1. And he did, bowing to political pressure, rewrite the report. And it became a schedule 1 drug and everything negative that has happened since, including egregious sentences to users, you can thank Tricky Dick for.

Another reason to hate Republicans. 

[kilodelta]

Thanks Dick...

[SGOS]

Pot is more dangerous than Cocaine??

[Mr.Obvious]

Marihuana is dangerous.
I'll stick to crystal meth, thank you very much.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[stromboli]

I've been semi involved in the issue in terms of letters to congress- the state senators and our boys in Washington. Got about half back in responses. Nearly all were negative, and none bothered to argue my reasons for decriminalization. But they were all Republicans. Got to the point I decided the postage cost wasn't worth the effort.

Based on my past experience I'm not holding my breath, since Utah twice had a bill that the governor supported and majority of the population supported but was killed because the Mormon leaders nixed it. Utah is a theocracy. The governor has even gone on record that he supports rescheduling it to class 2, and there are several organizations including the AMA and a national police chiefs group that support it. Doesn't matter. People listen to whom they want, and common sense and reason go right out the window.

[Baruch]

If you want to know what it is like being Shia in a Sunni majority ... Mormons in USA fit that model.  They even have ayatollahs ... I a'tol' ya this and that.

[stromboli]

http://www.desireemmondesir.com/home/2015/2/12/13-shocking-similarities-between-islam-and-mormonism

[Baruch]

Not shocking at all, I read part of a recent biography of Joseph Smith, that makes the good point that Joseph Smith is the most influential and original religious thinker the US has ever produced.  Brigham Young I would think gets kudos for good community administration, but I don't think he invented anything.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Reading some of the online comments about this story you would think that every baby should be smoking pot. "Nobody has ever gotten sick and there's never been a single case of anything negative about pot!"
I'm all for ending the drug war and think ALL drugs should be legal, but let's get real and stop pretending that there are no known side effects of smoking pot.. Clearly there are, but that should be left up to the individual to decide being the government has never and will never give a rats ass about anyones health stop pretending it's a public health issue.  It's not.

[stromboli]

Not shocking at all, I read part of a recent biography of Joseph Smith, that makes the good point that Joseph Smith is the most influential and original religious thinker the US has ever produced.  Brigham Young I would think gets kudos for good community administration, but I don't think he invented anything.

Brigham Young is my great great whatever grandfather. My last name is Young. BY did a few very smart things, even though he was a major asshole in most respects. He was very good at organizing and retaining the majority of the original group, though several splinter churches appeared, some of which are still in existence. He also managed with iron will to get them to the place he wanted them; that "this is the place" crap might've been spoken, but he was headed for the Utah territories from the beginning.

At one point he was one of the wealthiest men in the Americas, though on paper he didn't own anything. I have descendants of the original group all the way from Central Idaho to Eastern Nevada to Arizona. He controlled that much territory. But he was also racist, a murderer and a few other things. Strangely, Orrin Porter Rockwell, who was JS's bodyguard and hooked up with Young, is still thought of as a hero, though he did murder people in cold blood.

And JS didn't really invent anything. He made up a lot of stories, but the Book of Mormon actually came from several previously published works and history texts. He was smart and to some degree well read, but there were several people in his circle that were silent partners to his schemes. He didn't even invent polygamy. That idea came from William Law, who ended up starting a splinter church that didn't last long.

Influences that went into the BofM include whole sections of 2nd Isaiah, a book entitled "View of the Hebrews" where the idea of native Americans being from the holy land originates. Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Grace Abounding". He "translated" 500 pages in 60 days. It was a work of committee. All of the so called witnesses were cronies in the scheme.

I studied my way out of Mormonism, so I have a pretty good understanding of the religion.

[Solomon Zorn]

Everybody must get stoned!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/-Mk18aPydAU

[stromboli]

Lol. thanks Sol. I love the keyboard in that song.