A recent memorandum from the US Drug Enforcement Administration to several United States Senators indicates that the agency is prepared to respond in the coming months to a five-year-old petition seeking to amend the plant’s status as a schedule I prohibited substance.
Under the US Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the cannabis plant and its organic cannabinoids are classified as schedule I prohibited substances — the most restrictive category available under the law. As summarized by the DEA, “Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”
Explicitly, substances in this category must meet three specific inclusion criteria: The substance must possess “a high potential for abuse”; it must have “no currently accepted medical use” in the United States; and the substance must lack “accepted safety for use … under medical supervision.” Substances that do not meet these criteria must, by law, be categorized in less restrictive federal schedules (schedule II through schedule V) and are legally regulated accordingly. (For example, schedule II substances like morphine or methadone are available by prescription.) Alcohol and tobacco, two substances that possess far greater dangers to health than does cannabis, are not subject to federal classification under the CSA.
Federal law grants power to the US Attorney General to reclassify a controlled substance if the available scientific evidence no longer supports that drug’s classification. In practice, however, this power has been delegated to the DEA, with input from both FDA and the US Department of Health and Human Services. Federal law also allows third parties to petition these agencies to consider reclassifying controlled substances.
The petition now before the DEA was filed in 2011 by then-governors Christine Gregoire of Washington and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Other recent rescheduling petitions, such as a 2002 petition filed by a coalition
While it remains unknown at present time if the DEA will respond favorably to this current rescheduling effort, it has become apparent in recent years that reclassifying cannabis from schedule I to schedule II – the same category as cocaine – falls well short of the sort of federal reform necessary to reflect America’s emerging reefer reality. Specifically, reclassifying the pot plant from I to II (or even to schedule III) continues to misrepresent the plant’s safety relative to other controlled substances such as methamphetamine (schedule II), anabolic steroids (schedule III), or alcohol (unscheduled), and fails to provide states with the ability to fully regulate it free from federal interference.
Further, the federal policies in place that make clinical trial work with cannabis more onerous than it is for other controlled substances — such as the requirement that all source material be purchased from NIDA’s University of Mississippi marijuana cultivation program — are regulatory requirements that are specific to cannabis, not to Schedule I drugs in general. Simply rescheduling cannabis from I to II does not necessarily change these regulations, at least in the short-term.
In addition, the sort of gold-standard, large-scale, long-term Phase III safety and efficacy trials that are typically necessary prior to bringing therapeutic drugs to market are prohibitively expensive. As a result, trials of this kind are typically are funded by private pharmaceutical companies aspiring to bring a new product to market. In some cases, the federal government may assist in sharing these costs, such as was the case with the research and development of the synthetic THC pill Marinol (dronabinol). However, political reality dictates that neither entity is likely to pony up the tens of millions of dollars necessary to conduct such trials assessing the efficacy of herbal cannabis any time soon, if ever, regardless of the plant’s federal scheduling.
This is not to say that rescheduling cannabis would not have any positive tangible effects. At a minimum, it would bring an end to the federal government’s longstanding intellectual dishonesty that marijuana ‘lacks accepted medical use.’ It would also likely permit banks and other financial institutions to work with state-compliant marijuana-related businesses, and permit employers in the cannabis industry to take tax deductions similar to those enjoyed by other businesses. Rescheduling would also likely bring some level of relief to federal employees subject to random workplace drug testing for off-the-job cannabis consumption.
But ultimately, such a change would do little to significantly loosen federal prohibition or to make herbal cannabis readily accessible for clinical study. These goals can arguably only be accomplished by federally decsheduling cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol and tobacco, such as is proposed by US Senate Bill 2237, The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act. Doing so will finally provide states the power to establish their own marijuana policies free from federal intrusion.
It’s so much safer than alcohol and tobacco and so many people already pax taxes on those. It should be descheduled.
Thank you Captain Obvious. Food for thought about safely. These honest businesses need a way to safely pay their expenses.
“How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured…No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer…” Harry J. Anslinger { Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner until 1962}
WoW…. Just Saying
Alcohol and tobacco combined, neither of which are included in the drug schedules, cause 490,000 more deaths a year than does the use of cannabis.
Number of American deaths PER YEAR that result directly or primarily from the following selected causes nationwide, per World Almanacs, Life Insurance Actuarial (death) Rates, and the last 20 years of U.S. Surgeon Generals’ reports.
TOBACCO – 340,000 to 450,000
ALCOHOL (Not including 50% of all highway deaths and 65% of all murders) – 150,000+
ASPIRIN (Including deliberate overdose) – 180 to 1,000+
CAFFEINE (From stress, ulcers, and triggering irregular heartbeats, etc.) – 1,000 to 10,000
“LEGAL” DRUG OVERDOSE (Deliberate or accidental) from legal, prescribed or patent medicines and/or mixing with alcohol – e.g. Valium/alcohol – 14,000 to 27,000
ILLICIT DRUG OVERDOSE – (Deliberate or accidental) from all illegal drugs – 3,800 to 5,200
MARIJUANA – 0
Prescriptions for pain medication in states that have approved medical cannabis have dropped 20%. The “legal” drug companies hate this. Overdose deaths from opioids have dropped 25% in states that have medical cannabis.
The anti-cannabis lobby will do all they possibly can to hide the above information.
please spread this information far and wide
Well, all I have to say to the DEA is “fuck you!” I want cannabis completely de-scheduled immediately after this upcoming UN palaver. I want cannabis completely de-scheduled in the US. Yes, by all means, DEA, go ahead and de-schedule it bureaucratically. It’s be a baby step for the feds instead of one giant step for the DEA to de-schedule it completely. Your next step is to take the next baby step and remove cannabis from the schedule altogether.
I deeply mistrust the DEA. This letter appears to me to be a PSYOPS ploy to have the cannabis community let down its guard and think we can coast on the successes the rest of the way to legalization. Step on the gas! Pedal to the floor!
I noticed that the video for that Grassley committee shit is over an hour long. I’m slaving away at my crummy job, and all that crap that came up in his little committee meeting has to be refuted. The prohibitionist politicians will get a few days in the news cycle, but a pro-potumentary that includes debunking them on History or Viceland or whatever will get ratings even for the re-runs. Nobody wants to see snippets or soundbites of you and your ilk Grassely! The potumentary will beat the pro-cannabis drum, and your message will not get any air time or print. It has got to be refuted. Someone has got to make that potumentary, Steve.
Chances are, that rescheduling will be deferred to a later (non existant) date.
Stall tactic: That would be consistent with past behaviour. However, the DEA has taken quite a beating (politically) over marijuana in the last couple of years, and they’ve been forced to make concessions, like allowing hemp (not marijuana) to be grown in Kentucky for research.
They are obviously hostile however; so if they do reschedule, it will be attempt to cling to power and stay relevant, and means little, since schedule 2 drugs are effectively illegal, since no doctor is going to readily hand me a prescription for morphine just because I might want it… still sounds like marijuana prohibition to me.
But if they do go to schedule 2, (and I agree, that’s a BIG “if”) funny how that puts them right on the same page with Hillary! That would underscore just how prohibitionist Hillary’s stance on cannabis actually is. Sad but true: she supports prohibition.
Rescheduling from 1 to 2 is arguably an improvement, but anyone who actually thinks cannabis SHOULD BE in schedule 2, or should STAY in schedule 2, is working against us, not for us.
I’m talking about Hillary. She insults all of us by promoting schedule 2.
Kind of a follow up to an earlier post, but my gut feeling was right about Obama not descheduling so as not to release more classified documents from the ongoing Fast and Furious court scandal;
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/judge-rejects-obamas-executive-privilege-claim-over-fast-and-furious-records-217970
A federal judge partially rejected Obama’s executive privilege in response to the Fast and Furious scandal on Tuesday. President Obama reserves the right to appeal, but one can imagine that descheduling by executive order may release more documents unprotected by executive privilege.
Hopefully, if Obama really wants to deschedule or even reschedule, he can win an appeal before November, but Republicans would likely delay the appeal until after elections.
Nicely insightful. Good point.
“Marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.” Harry J. Anslinger { Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner until 1962}
WoW…. Just Saying
Just because a person who was in the Gov’t, doesn’t mean it’s true!
WoW….. MIND BLOWN!!
Former DEA Spokeswoman: Marijuana is Safe and The DEA Knows It:
Quotes from Belita Nelson, former DEA spokesperson, who was formerly a chief spoke person for the DEA:
“Marijuana is safe, we know it is safe. It’s our cash cow and we will never give up,” Belita Nelson told an audience of doctors and nurses at the Marijuana for Medical Professionals Conference in Denver, Colorado a short time ago.
Nelson says that was the first thing she learned from her Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) education coordinator, Paul Villaescusa, when she was hired in the Dallas office in April 1998.
She states that the DEA made the mistake of not having her sign a non-disclosure contract when she was hired.
Nelson states that when she began to expose the truth the DEA tried to keep her quiet and told her. “name your price, $10,000 a month? $20,000? What do you want Belita?”
“Gradually, I came out of my shell and that dark place I had been because of what I had experienced and what I had seen… If you think the DEA are the good guys, they are not. They are really not. We are talking corruption on steroids.”
Read more at #illegallyhealed
Basing public policy on anything but what can be inferred from the available data is a recipe for throwing our tax dollars away. Ideology, history, propaganda, ignorance, and pure stubborn intransigence can never guide us as efficaciously.
Galileo, obvious bravo and as you know the political will to exploit taxpayers dollars is a certainty of the American political system. Full disclosure, its a requirement. What more reason than “because its there” do our elected officials have to be concerned about the American people? Pungent question, yet one requiring considerable fortitude and resilience among the elite. Where is honesty without regret?
“Marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.” Harry J. Anslinger { Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner until 1962}
WoW…. Just Saying
It’s about damn time!!!!
I agree with you.
A bone to Big Pharma and nothing more.
Where is deadly tobacco scheduled?
Cannabis deaths per year – 0
Tobacco deaths per year – a HUUUGE stack of corpses that would reach to the Moon!
arrest the people that make alchohol products and cigarettes. millions of people are killed by these items when in fact cannabis is so beneficial for cancer and so many problems. has never killed one person in thousandds of years
The figure I have are:
Annual Deaths due to acetephenamin (Tylenol): 458
Annual Deaths due to alcohol: 25,000
Annual Deaths due to tobacco: 443,000
Annual Deaths due to cannabis: 0
…from US Center for Disease Control (cdc.gov)
I’m surprised at how low the alcohol figure is in Mark’s USA list because worldwide
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcohol-deaths-on-the-rise-worldwide/
it’s 3.3 million for 2012, second Best to tobacco’s over 6 million.
Election reminder everyone: over the last decades Big 2WackGo has consistently given twice as much money to Repubs as to Dems– purpose to promote cannabis prohibition, what else? Even a Heil Hillary is better than any “red” alternative presently on the scene.
Sanders has a proposed Bill S-2237. Its to deschedule marijuana all together. Equivalent to beer and tobacco.
“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”
Harry J. Anslinger { Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner until 1962}
WoW…. Just Saying
The DEA is a government agency after all and when do politicians or government offices admit they have perpetrated a lie to the citizens of America let alone just made a mistake?
Don’t hold your breath for this decision later this summer to be favorable. It will be masked with hundreds of pages of more meaningless justifications, distractions, and false assumptions.
Good point. Agencies have institutional egos, and this agency would find it impossible to accept that they have been and still are dead wrong about marijuana.
The government is corrupt and they are not going to give up the millions of dollars they receive from pharmaceutical, oil, lumber, cotton companies to keep Hemp/Cannabis illegal because it would crush their greedy asses if Hemp/Cannabis wasn’t regulated and or controlled.
what about a class action lawsuit based on the idea that the government has a fiduciary relationship to citizens, and the current policy is established in self-interest of the government (and presumably pharmaceutical companies) not of the general public, and that the current policies are in place despite abundant and apparent evidence that marijuana does not meet criteria for schedule 1 classification, so the government, at the expense of its citizens is deliberately abiding by outdated and false information, and based on that, imposing criminal and economic sanctions on people, ruining lives as a result, and denying people the health benefits of a natural substance that by now there is abundant evidence of its healing and preventative properties. So how about it?
Absolutely correct’
I like where you’re going with this idea, but I’d like to see anybody that are proven to have hidden anything from the public to go to prison. I know a lot of them are already dead, but I’d still piss on their graves.
Marijuana is the “keystone” to the US Control Substance Act of 1970. It is the only reason why the Control Substance Act was created. It is an anti-marijuana cult you are dealing with. Who ever benefits from it being illegal are the sponsors of that cult.
change the scheduling already!!!
Today South Carolina passed the patients first marijuana law.
What the hell ever happened to our democracy? Let’s do away with the DEA. The War on Drugs has done little to slow the use of drugs. Legalize all drugs, and educate and treat the abusers. Leave those who use responsibly alone!
Rescheduling isn’t what we need, but it’s something. Small steps folks. It’s working. We just need to stick with it. Be patient and positive.
“the cannabis plant and its organic cannabinoids are classified as schedule I prohibited substances”
A simple reform of the federal definition of marijuana will deschedule the cannabis plant without rescheduling marijuana, and after that definition is reformed, then marijuana can be rescheduled. Implementing a holistic interpretation of the current definition, and ending the literal interpretation of that definition, will allow for these things. Including the appropriate nuance will allow people to benefit, and control the rapid development of uses for the cannabis plant.
This year is a good time to implement this reformed definition which will set these things into motion:
Sec.802.(16). The term “marijuana” means all parts of the smoke produced by the combustion of the plant Cannabis sativa L. which is prohibited to be grown by or sold by any publicly traded corporation or subsidiary company.
[Editor’s note: This must be the communist-friendly definition for the cannabis plant…one that holds no sway in America.
Stop pretending that cannabis is not already a major cash crop that generates billions in illegal and untaxed PROFITS to growers, mules and sellers. Consumers want low cost and high quality products, irrespective of whether one is referring to cars, breakfast cereal or cannabis. In free market societies, like America, companies that are profit-driven are the most effective and responsive delivering consumers’ needs.
Cannabis, an herbal drug, is never going to be treated like carrots or radishes under the law, local/state zoning boards and tax regulations.]
That Section 802.(16). definition, “smoke produced by combustion” will be irrelevant as soon as NORML gets busy trumpeting (OOPS SORRY) the distinction between drug Combustion and herb Vaporization. The media having been infected for going on 2 centuries with the high-profit magic image of $igarette/Joint overdose puffage means we have substantial image correction work to do, so start mastering scanner technology everyone! Post photo and diagram of any flexdrawtube einzelheatler you know how to make on that wiki “12 Easy Ways to Make Vape Toke Utensils” article and everywhere else you (Yes We) can.
This exchange highlights what I’ve always seen as an inherent conflict of interest between capitalist enterprise and social justice. Before marijuana legalization was a reality in many places, this conflict of interest was mainly hypothetical in that context. Not that is changing in front of us.
I do certainly accept that there are many people who are pro-legalization, and who also run a marijuana business. I have no beef with these individuals; in fact, they serve me well. (Thanks!)
But there are, I believe, situations in which these two motivations become mutually exclusive. At these points, one must choose between one ideology (profit) and the other (social justice.)
You can be in the intersection of the sets legitimately; but when push comes to shove, I’m in it for the social justice, and would be fully prepared to sacrifice capitalism for socialism (never mind communism), rather than abandon the cause of stopping marijuana arrests, which is ulimately about justice, not profit.
As a means to an end, Capitalism is a poor vehicle for achieving social justice. There’s no profit in it! That’s why corporations will pollute the environment on a massive scale (there’s profit in it), but can’t be bothered to clean it up, or even try to prevent it in the first place (there’s no profit in it.) With regard to marijuana legalization, Capitalism may be an necessary evil, or it may just be an unnecessary evil!
The goal is to end marijuana arrests. I think we should all be able to agree on that!
Excellent reply Mark, but I would like to point out that there IS profit in social justice, but a fairly distributed one, not just one made for Sherriff’s Associations, private prisons, druglords, certain Congressman, patent 6630507 for GW Pharmaceuticals, and the list goes on.
Bernie Sanders made that point well on MSNBC (which I only watch on youtube if Sanders is on), when he described how raising the minimum wage puts cash back into our consumer economy, helping everyone.
For marijuana legalization, Ive heard crazier regurgitation than the nonsense Year is splurting out. Hell, I’m in Texas where I’m wondering how I’m meeting with Libertarians who, granted R-David Simpson from Longview introduced a bill to legalize marijuana because “it’s a plant from God,” they also believe in NO income tax. I remember Ron Paul many moons ago at the Texas state capitol yelling “Abolish the DEA!” To which everyone responded with cheers, “yeaaaah!” Followed by “Abolish the Department of Education!” To which the crowd went “Yea…Huh?” I guess Libertarians just want the poor little fuckers to mill about the streets and create a health crisis like the uneducated zombies that poor schoolchildren are. So everybody’s got their own agenda$. (The Nazi-raised Koch brothers are Libertarians, I thought I’d throw that in for good mea$ure).
So it was then that I realized that I was in fact a progressive liberal, desiring to spend the fairly taxed revenue from recreational marijuana on public education. It’s a hard sell in Texas but boy do we NEED it!
Year, I don’t know either who sent you (Project SAM) or what possible motivating self interest you keep posting here that would merely maintain prohibition, but clearly, it’s not welcome on this blog.
I mean reinterpret the CSAct to define marijuana as the “smoke?” NORML has been trying to get the DEA to stop arresting people for the mere possession of marijuana for more than 44 years and your solution is to walk up to the DEA, blow a big shotgun of smoke into an agents face, and with a dumb laugh, say “ha-ha, arrest the smoke!” ? Oh, wait, even better, you’ve got money ridin on a big vaporizing-cannibutter med-dispensary and your greatest wish is that somehow, your interpretation of the CSAct will shine disinfecting light into the dark bowels of the DOJ? You don’t make any fucking sense. Not gonna happen. We need to DEschedule marijuana from the caustic CSAct. Period.
In all honesty, Year, do you even link to any of the wonderful bills endorsed on this website, Take Action, and write your Congressman? If not, your words are merely an unnecessary distraction, and you are clearly blowing smoke on the wrong blog.
I am not bothering to even hope that the DEA will ever do the right thing. Historically, they have been most likely to do the wrong thing. I believe they are corrupt to the core and have been an incredible waste of tax dollars over the years. They have been an incredible force for injustice and a major source of lies regarding cannabis.
We have absolutely no reason to trust that they will ever do anything that does not suit their purpose which seems to be the maintenance of their power and income. It has never mattered to them if the American people have greatly suffered because of their actions.
The DEA should be abolished. They are a tremendous stain on our country and anyone who believes in Democracy and human rights.
If they do decide to move cannabis to schedule 2, I’m sure the only reason will be that they are bowing to tremendous pressure and know that it won’t really make much difference in the scheme of things.
Descheduling is the only reasonable thing to do with regards to cannabis. They know it too. I don’t think they are a bunch of idiots. I think they are greedy and evil! It pisses me off that our Federal Govt continues to support this rogue useless organization that has done so much harm to good Americans.
@Oracle: lol! I would go with the more tabloid “Hey! DEA! Why don’t you take the Fuck You train into disbandment?” (And we’ll keep drilling Steve to get the big potumentary done, although he may be a little busy from that last blog endorsing AUMA; And the better option isssss…?)
NORML is always preaching to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but with the DEA inflicting sunlight into their own untrustworthy, “need more research” infected voice, the only good or perfect is to march on with DEscheduling marijuana, no exceptions.
I find it fascinating how slow even progressive states like New York are just now catching on to this major difference between Bernie and Hillary’s campaigns. Hillary says “reschedule,” to II, meaning more disproportionate incarceration and more asset forfeiture without due process like her hubby Bill expanded upon with the DEA’s Special Operations Division back in ’95. It means complicit government monopoly on Medical Marijuana with their pathetic farm in Mississippi.
Bernie has introduced legislation in the Senate to deschedule marijuana, which we can link to and support in this page. BIG difference. (I refuse to say HUGE in a relevant sentence… Damn, just did…)
If Bernie wins New York it will be like we all put a nickel in the slot machine after busting in Vegas and we all suddenly win!
In the meantime, why is Attorney General Loretta Lynch backing down from the DEA?
Thanks for the affirmation. I’m right their with Susan Sarandon. I’m so glad she spoke out. The cancer I have been battling has affected my reproductive areas, and it has given me bladder issues that treating with cannabis and relaxing with cannabis is effective at and for recreational purposes to avoid having to run to the toilet often if one were consuming alcoholic beverages.
I want so-called free university tuition as an incentive for students from families without the means but with the brains to score well and do well in higher education (no pun intended) and I want universal health care–in place of perpetual war, or along side it if national security necessitates it. Right now I’m looking at one of those old TrueMajority.org pens with the pull out scroll that shows how much in billions the US spends per annum on the Pentagon ($399), children’s health ($41), public education ($34), humanitarian and foreign aid ($10), head start ($7), and to reduce our reliance on foreign oil ($2). It states is source as the US Budget, Fiscal Year 2004, Proposed, telephone 212/243-3416.
That was 2004. I wonder if such a pen with a pull-out scroll would be effective for Bernie and getting his message out to the voters. If it’s going to be Hillary I hope she co-opts his legalization of cannabis position, as well as universal health care and free college tuition for those who meet the mark on whatever kind of entrance exam or school exit exams/transcripts criteria to qualify. I’d like to see more European-style apprenticeships for our teenagers with companies that are actually hiring them afterward as a true and real hope for our less affluent inner city and rural youth.
I’m with ya all the way, Oracle. It never ceases to amaze me how fairly regulating marijuana can even cure a sick Democracy!
I’ve read your posts on this website for many years … Ones where I wasn’t even sure if you were gonna make it to the next post, describing chemo and all that fun stuff… and it does my heart good to know you’re hanging on and lived to see an historic breakthrough in medical marijuana for Pennsylvania that, to be honest, I really wasn’t sure was gonna happen in a non-voter-initiated state this soon. But with perseverance like yours… and a little green herb… you and Pennsylvania have gone a long way. Congratulations.
I have a good feeling that after all that limelight on medical marijuana the people of Pennsylvania will be better educated and prepared to vote for Bernie next week too. Keep on with the struggle. The longer the battle, the sweeter the victory.
The Department of Alcohol Prohibition morphed into the DEA. The DEA will morph into the AMA, the Anti Muslim Agency? Or has it already changed into the FDA?
In Louisiana it s still five years per seed,and five years per plant..I tested positive for MJ and my credit score dropped 100 pts..One unpaid ambulance bill..La Buscador
Going to be short.
It needs to be at the same place as where alcohol is. It is less dangerous, yet is treated like it is more dangerous.
It needs to be descheduled completely.
It needs to be off the list.
If you ask me, hands off cannabis completely. It’s none of the government’s business if any private person want’s to grow, sell, consume. NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.
[Editor’s note: Commerce and/or the act of ‘selling’ drugs is not a private act and should be subject to the same type of general government regulations and taxes similar to the ones found in the alcohol space. However, like the production of beer, wine and brandies for one’s personal use so too with botanical cannabis products (of interest, 85 years after alcohol prohibition ended in America it is only legal for home-produced ‘low’ potency alcohol products [usually around 40 proof max]. ‘High’ potent distilled spirits must be manufactured and sold by licensed businesses).]
Here in Pennsylvania it is legal to make.
100 gallons of beer.
and
200 gallons of wine.
I do not understand the laws, as I feel it is unfair, you are allowed to make another 100 gallons of wine. I feel it should be allowed to plant up to six plants, but that’s going to happen later in the future. I wish they’d let you now, as I would be overjoyed to be allowed to plant my own. As it is now, it is still in the hands of the black market.
I hope they don’t legalize, and then try to push a percentage limit, as that wouldn’t be fair. Of course neither is the 100 gallon limit on beer, when wine makers can make 200 without a license.
Moonshine is illegal pretty much everywhere in the US. but it is not like it is stopping people from making it.
I’ve never made moonshine, but have made apple wine. If I wanted it much stronger, all I would need to do is add bread and two more cups of sugar. But I know it to be illegal, so I just won’t do it.
Alcohol is manufactured and the government consistently tells us how bad it is for us. Tobacco products are manufactured and there is a label on it’s packaging telling us how dangerous it is. Marijuana is a plant it is not manufactured, has proven to have miraculous medicinal properties, and has never killed anyone. Ok, Then why are alcohol and tobacco products legal and available everywhere, while marijuana is illegal? If it doesn’t make sense it is Wrong!
I got kicked off FaceBook, Ladeda. Apparently they don’t like my political statement I made on Gary Johnson’s post. Well there you go. Discrimination shows it’s ugly head again for me. I can’t wait for vindication. Come on Maryland Why is it taking so long??? MONEY again.
Double Standards;
I have a Nevada Medical Marijuana Card. My seed orders get snagged at the boarder by US Customs. How about an Executive Order by the President? The President of the United States of America, has the power to single handedly reschedule Marijuana with an Executive Order. Does anybody else know this?
Cannabis hemp became illegal, in all it’s forms, because of greed and avarice. The American people have been lied to. Period. The government continues to cling to those lies despite their exposure. The government continues to expect us to naively adhere to the schedule restrictions despite their dishonest behavior.
If cannabis is restricted, so should be potatoes (from which alcohol is made) and foxglove (from which comes digitalis) and white sugar (look at the potential for abuse and dependence there!)…caffeine, poppies, hops, wheat, and the list goes on.
It is kept on the list of scheduled drugs because legalization or descheduling will eventually shut down the “cancer industry” that employs thousands of people, the pharmaceutical corporations and what is left of the timber and cotton industries and many more.
This amazing plant stands to change and heal our world. There would be a job for anyone that wanted one. The growing of it would heal our economy, ecology and our ozone deterioration.
It’s time for the truth to set us free!
Legalize now! Deschedule immediately!
RE; Editor’s note: Commerce / ‘selling’ drugs should be subject to gov’t regulations and taxes like alcohol.
1. ALCOHOL IS NOT A DRUG !
alcohol is a POISON !!
you can DIE from ALCOHOL POISIONING !!
it can STOP YOUR HEART,
and STOP YOUR BREATHING.
you can even DROWN to death,
in your own puke.
why put pot, in that category ??
2. POT IS NOT A ‘DRUG’, IT IS AN HERB !!
(unless by ‘DRUG’, you mean a MEDICINE, there are many diseases it either cures, treats, or prevents)
but, ALL of the commonly available, well known, HERBS and SPICES, were known to have beneficial, MEDICINAL effects, many years ago.
ex; rosemary, oregano, paprica, turmeric, black pepper, garlic, nutmeg, cinnamon, cumin, ect.
and just like pot, no known deaths, from them.
AND,
YES,
some of them,
CAN give you a buzz.
(is that what you mean by a ‘drug’ ?? it gives buzz ??)
coffee, tea, energy drinks, give you a buzz.
some people even get a buzz, from; mangoes, salami, or chocolate.
if i sold some home grown rosemary, to my friends, for personal use, why would the gov’t need to be involved ??
(if it is large quantities sold to stores, as a career, and i had EMPLOYEES, i would agree to some regulations, and a buisness licence.
-BUT THERE IS NO TAX ON FOOD,
HERBS OR SPICES,
OR MEDICINES,
so there should be no tax on pot.-
if i have NO EMPLOYEES, and limited sales, no gov’t intervention is needed, just like a yard sale)
3. PRESCRIPTION PILLS,
kill 100,000 people a year,
WHEN USED AS DIRECTED.
the gov’t lets the makers do their own testing, for efficacy and purity.
so, if the gov’t is not worried about them, and their unnatural products, why should they be worried about me, selling a NATURAL product, that has never killed anyone ??
By the book (the official legal rules which are supposed to apply to scheduling), Schedule V would be correct for cannabis.
Schedule I would be correct for alcohol and tobacco.
Schedule III would be correct for caffeine.
This shows the extent to which there is no rational basis for the scheduling is in practice.
Can a Constitutional lawsuit be brought based on the scheduling having no rational basis as applied?
Obama should fire the head of DEA on national Television and show Chuck Rosenberg’s offshore accounts which contains dirty money from Big Drug Companies! – The FDA has done its research for weed to reclassified as a schedule 3 drug so medical research is legal and small businesses can make money to create jobs which helps the economy hands down!