One of these things is not like the others: heroin, marijuana, LSD, ecstasy.
The date April 20, better known as 4/20, means different things to different people. But The Leader wanted to take this opportunity, on this particular date, to discuss the most talked about 4/20 correlation: cannabis. (By the way, “marijuana” is the one that’s not like the others.)
Whether smoking weed recreationally is good or bad is not of concern. What we are concerned with is the fact the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has the plant listed as a Schedule I drug (along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy). The regulations that come with that classification are stifling the potential that marijuana has for actually helping people.
The DEA has five categories, or “schedules,” in which it puts different drugs, substances and chemicals. Varying restrictions come with the different schedules, with Schedule V having the least harsh restrictions, and Schedule I having the harshest.
“The strict Schedule I label is problematic, advocates say, because it incurs the harshest federal penalties for those who are caught with it,” stated an International Business Times article from 2015, “and adds bureaucratic hurdles for researchers who want study it.”
States have taken action, stepping away from the heavy federal penalties. While that’s great, the fact that scientists have to go through ridiculous amounts of red tape to study marijuana for medicinal purposes is ludicrous. A USA Today article mentioned that it took one scientist, who’s a researcher through the University of California at San Diego, three years to get approval to even begin the research. And the research was for pain treatments.
Need to wrap your head around it? Have another look: It took three years of convincing for the federal government to allow research for pain treatments.
The problem that The Leader has with that is the fact that there is existing research in multiple countries, finding case after case in which medicinal marijuana helps with so many different ailments. Some ailments are pain, multiple sclerosis, nausea, epilepsy, concussion, Alzheimer’s and bipolar disorder, according to CNN.
What might be worse is that cocaine and meth are Schedule II. Who still thinks marijuana is as dangerous as cocaine and meth? That notion stems from Richard Nixon, all the way back in the 1970s.
The same USA Today article included an interview with Matthew Barden, who was a DEA spokesman.
“A lot of people in the marijuana debate say to just put it under a different schedule,” he was quoted as saying. “But in order to do that, the [Federal Drug Administration] would have to change everything. So we, the DEA, can’t just put something in Schedule [II]. That would be a violation of how things are scheduled.”
According to International Business Times, people have tried petitioning the DEA to change the scheduling, but to no avail. Congress also has the ability to pass a reclassification bill, which it has tried to do before. And, of course, the president could always pass an executive order.
Isn’t there some sort of election coming up later this year?