The Goldilocks Option of Cannabis Reform

[justaprogressive]

The 50-year-old “schedule” system is a mess. It includes both FDA-regulated pharmaceuticals and street drugs, which are the purview of law enforcement. It makes little sense that weed, which doesn’t cause fatal overdoses, is more tightly restricted than, say, Schedule 2 fentanyl, which causes tens of thousands of them annually. And it hasn’t ever made sense that the federal government legally considers pot as dangerous as heroin and more dangerous than cocaine.

Until now, the feds’ official position has been that marijuana, as a Schedule 1 drug, has no medical value and high potential for abuse. Such drugs have virtually no place in law-abiding society. But that status has become laughable as well over 20 states legalized weed and created regulated industries for it. Schedule 2 drugs, which include fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and various prescription opiates, also have high potential for abuse, but the government acknowledges that they have some medical value. There are legal, pharmaceuticalized forms of these drugs, but the street forms are illegal.

HHS has proposed moving marijuana to Schedule 3, where it would join ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone, a hodgepodge of drugs to which weed has no obvious connection. (There are also schedules 4 (Xanax, Valium) and 5 (cough syrup with codeine.)

Schedule 3 would do two things that the cannabis world has celebrated. First, it would be an acknowledgment by the federal government that marijuana has medical value. About 40 states have recognized this in law, though they have differing views of what those medical benefits are. Second, it would end a tax rule known as 280E that the cannabis industry hates.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/09/marijuana-schedule-reform-hhs-cannabis-industry-legalization.html