The DEA Says Marijuana As Dangerous As Heroin

Following a petition by Congress to consider rescheduling marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced in a report on Thursday, August 11, 2016 that it would retain the drug's status as a Schedule 1 illegal substance. "You feel like you just can't do those great, high-quality trials" that researchers do with other drugs, she said. The limitation has translated into limited research on the drug's benefits and consequences. At present, there are no marijuana products approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), nor is marijuana under a New Drug Application (NDA) evaluation at the FDA for any indication.

Marijuana's legal status as a "Schedule I" drug, which makes it an illegal drug on the federal level, "severely constrains the access and the number and type of people who can do research with cannabis", said Ryan Vandrey, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who studies marijuana. The policy has meant that since 1968, only the University of MS could supply marijuana for FDA-approved studies.

The New York Times credited the Obama administration with the decision to allow for more studies, noting that the president has said he views pot as no more risky than alcohol. After all, since 1968 federal bureaucrats have permitted only a single agency - the University of MS via an exclusive contract with the US National Institute of Drug Abuse - to legally produce cannabis for FDA-approved research trials, an arbitrary prohibition that does not exist for other controlled substances and that has led to limited drug supplies and accusations that federally-backed research is skewed largely toward identifying pot's potential harms rather than it benefits.

Indeed, only one site in the U.S.is authorized to grow marijuana for research purposes, and that's the University of Mississippi. Any US study that looks at marijuana needs to get its pot from the institute, whose mission isn't to prove efficacy of the drug but rather its harm and abuse potential.

It is important that there be broad and thorough research in the coming months and years about the effects of marijuana - especially given how many states have made its usage possible and how many more are moving in that direction. So far, only the University of MS is allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes. DEA also considers schedule I to be the most risky controlled substances, with "potentially severe psychological or physical dependence".

However, DEA also expanded the number of entities that may become DEA registered to cultivate marijuana in the United States.

So the DEA is basically perpetuating a big catch-22-claiming there's not enough research on the medical benefits of weed while tying the hands of researchers who want to study the medical benefits-by keeping it a Schedule 1 drug.

The agency maintains its "commitment to work together with the FDA and NIDA to identify ways of streamlining research on marijuana and its extracts". And this strategy of ignore and delay continued at every step, dragging the process out for 15 years until 1988, when DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis Young, following days of testimony, finally ruled in our favor.

Marijuana has no accepted medical use in the United States. "She will also ensure Colorado, and other states that have enacted marijuana laws, can continue to serve as laboratories of democracy". "As the HHS 8-Factor Analysis states, drugs containing cannabinoids can be placed in Schedules II-V while cannabis remains in Schedule I", stated Mike Liszewski, ASA's Government Affairs Director. "It's illegal and could be removed from us at any time".

"We need to get the medical value out of it. Turn it into a prescription medication".