Will the agency maintain its long-held “flat Earth” position? Will it take the necessary steps to bring marijuana policy up to date? ?”
By Paul Armentano, NORML
The Department of Health and Services has recently released hundreds of pages of documents that confirm what the overwhelming of public have known for decades, namely: Marijuana can be therapeutically beneficial. Its harms aren’t comparable to those of alcohol or heroin, which federal regulations consider it similar to.
The top federal agency for health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse came to these conclusions in a letter urging the Drug Enforcement Administration to remove the Schedule I prohibition status of “botanical marijuana” in the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Schedule I substances, by definition, are federally illegalized due to their “high potential for misuse” and “lack of accepted safety under medical supervision.” Congress and other federal agencies have been insisting that cannabis be placed in this strict category since 1970. Now, the top federal health agencies in the United States are changing their tune.
Health and Human Services (HHS), which was given by the Biden administration the task of reviewing the federal designation for cannabis in 2022, based their conclusions on the experiences of more than “30,000 health care providers authorized to recommend marijuana under state law” and the 6 million cannabis patients registered with state laws they serve.
The agency concluded that “the vast majority of people who use marijuana do so in a way that doesn’t lead to dangerous outcomes for themselves or others.” Our review found no safety concerns that indicate the medical use marijuana poses unacceptable safety risks, even for indications that are supported by credible scientific evidence.
The Department of Health and Human Services added that “the risks to public health presented by marijuana are low when compared with other drugs of abuse” such as benzodiazepines, a Schedule IV drug, or alcohol, which has not been scheduled.
The public is well aware of the fact that this has been a reality for a long time. Twenty-four states, which are home to 53% of the U.S.’s population, have legalized adult use marijuana. Thirty eight states regulate access to medical cannabis. The majority of these policy changes at the state level were implemented by voters.
70% of Americans agree that cannabis should be legal in the United States for people over 21 years old. The majority of Americans agree that alcohol is more harmful than marijuana to health.
The federal government has refused to change its position on marijuana for over five decades. The DEA, which has the final say in the federal designation of cannabis , said as recently as 2016 that there was no compelling reason for marijuana to be removed from Schedule I.
The ball is back in the DEA’s court. Will the agency continue its “flat Earth” stance? Will it take the necessary steps to bring marijuana policy up to date?
The time will tell. It’s obvious that the American public is already set on one side.
Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), is the Deputy director of NORML.
The Hill published an earlier version of this op-ed. OtherWords adapted the original.
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