Pubdate: Sat, 03 Sep 2016 Source: Orange County Register, The (CA) Copyright: 2016 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321 Author: Sal Rodriguez DEA MARIJUANA RECLASSIFICATION BEHIND SCHEDULE On August 11, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced its rejection of petitions to reschedule marijuana, an unsurprising, but disappointing, decision. Currently designated a Schedule I substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act, the prohibition of marijuana has long been a central component of the vast web of federal, state and local government entities devoted to combating (certain) drug use. Alongside drugs like heroin and LSD, marijuana is in the most restrictive category of federal drug regulations. Officially, the DEA rejected calls to reschedule marijuana "because it does not meet the criteria for currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, there is a lack of accepted safety for its use under medical supervision and it has a high potential for abuse." This determination has long been controversial, given the mounting evidence that marijuana use does provide medicinal benefits to at least some people and that marijuana use is certainly safe relative to many pharmaceutical drugs. According to the Marijuana Policy Project, over 2 million Americans are using medical marijuana in states that have legalized it for that purpose. "Keeping marijuana in Schedule I shows that the DEA continues to ignore research, and places politics above science," Michael Collins, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement following the decision. "In reality, marijuana should be descheduled and states should be allowed to set their own policies." That latter point is critical. There's an extent to which advocates should continue to push for expanded research of the medicinal benefits of marijuana, but restricting the debate and discussion to the terms and conditions of the CSA is needlessly limiting. The simple concepts of personal freedom and personal responsibility have been lost in drug policy. In a country where people are free to consume alcohol and tobacco, drugs without medical uses and with a high potential for abuse, using the force of government to punish individuals from ingesting substances like marijuana has always been peculiar. Earlier this year, Dan Baum, writing in Harpers Magazine, presented an important insight into the thinking that gave rise to modern federal drug control policy. John Ehrlichman, a key aide to President Richard Nixon, told Baum that the rationale for the "war on drugs" was always political in nature. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman told Baum. Marijuana has long been the focus of the war on (some) drugs, which, over 40 years and $1 trillion later, is no closer to eradicating drug use than when it began. In 2014, there were more than 700,000 marijuana arrests, mostly for possession. Though down from the peak of 873,000 arrests in 2007, it's difficult to see the public safety benefit of arresting that many people for what is at most a moral offense, depending on your perspective. Naturally, entities with a lot to lose like the DEA shouldn't be expected to voluntarily cede control over what has, in a sense, been a cash crop for them. At this point, the focus shouldn't necessarily be on rescheduling marijuana so much as descheduling it and allowing the states to decide for themselves how to deal with marijuana. Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed descheduling, and perhaps support can be mustered for that. In the long-term, it's also worth considering whether it's necessary for the federal government to be involved in protecting Americans from themselves, and revisiting the value of the CSA. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom