Marijuana has a lower potential for abuse than other drugs that are subjected to the same restrictions, with scientific support for its use as a medical treatment, researchers from the US Food and Drug Administration say in documents supporting its reclassification as a Schedule III substance.
Marijuana is currently classified as Schedule I, reserved for the most dangerous controlled substances, including heroin and LSD. In 2022, President Joe Biden asked US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and the attorney general to begin the administrative process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Rachel Levine wrote a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration in August in which she supported the reclassification to Schedule III, a list that includes “drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence” such as ketamine, testosterone and Tylenol with codeine.
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Rescheduling marijuana could open up more avenues for research, allow cannabis businesses to bank more freely and openly, and have firms no longer subject to a 40-year-old tax code that disallows credits and deductions from income generated by sales of Schedule I and II substances.
Even naming heroin and LSD in the same breath is laughably unhinged
America, where opening your mind is considered just as dangerous as ruining your life and health.
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
Terence McKenna
Took me like fifteen years to do that without drugs. Could have saved me a lot of time.
I took acid once. I giggled a lot and led my friends on an “adventure” into my backyard where we played hacky sack until it got dark enough to watch the stars. It was awful! You don’t want no part of this shit, Dewey!
I think I kinda want it
Psychedelics are awesome. If you don’t have much experience with them, keep it to a moderate dose. I eat mushrooms quite a bit and a single dose at +5g would rock my world still.
In a healthy environment with a healthy mindset, you can discover a ton about yourself and how your mind works. Or, you can just have fun and socialize.
I use mushrooms medicinally and recreationally. If I want to chill and meditate I can. If I want to be social and have fun, I can. Regardless of my mood, they have been an awesome tool for managing my anxiety, social anxiety and depression. Best of all, it has been a key component in my recovery from alcoholism.
They are not for everyone, unfortunately. If you are not prepared for an accidental high dosage, it can be challenging. (There is so much variability in mushrooms, it can happen. Not so much with with substances like LSD.)
Yea I’ve taken lsd, mushrooms and dmt many, many times.
I used to love acid when I was younger. I bought 30 hits of blotter just for my 18th birthday for me and my friends. Never hallucinated like some people claim but had tons of energy and it made everything feel so… real? and vibrant. Shrooms were cool but just not nearly on the same level.
You definitely want to plan ahead and make sure you’re surrounded by good company and plenty to do beforehand though.
Tbf, this is hardly unique to the US, and a handful of states are actually decriminalizing some psychedelics now. Not sure where else in the world is doing that.
The US is largely responsible for the 3 international treaties that semi standardized the prohibitions that have defined and driven drug policies across most of the western world since the 60s, though.
https://www.jtl.columbia.edu/bulletin-blog/international-drug-control-regime-and-reforms#:~:text=Currently%2C three major treaties make,)%2C%20and%20(3)%20United
It’s inherently problematic that the DEA is in charge of scheduling
Rescheduling marijuana would likely lead to a lower budget for the DEA… No way is the DEA going to voluntarily lower the scheduling of such a widely used drug
im pretty sure the dea smokes now hemp tho
They don’t get money based on how many drugs are illegal. Not to mention, they like to go after big dealers which some will continue to import illegally or grow it in illegal ways. The DEA will still come after them.
Oh sweet summer child… The dea absolutely loses money if MJ is legalized.
They get money based on the resources needed to tackle illegal drug manufacturing/sales/usage
The more widely used an illegal drug is, the more resources they need to fight it
Reminder that the most dangerous drug in terms of deaths caused per capita is alcohol. Refined sugar and HFCS probably has alcohol’s numbers beat if you consider that a drug though.
Nicotine/cigarettes are up there too.
I’m guessing obesity beats them all.
Obesity isn’t a drug. But to be fair, food is a hell of a drug.
That’s a good question. I’m an actuarie (don’t work on life or health) and I know that smoking is a big factor on risk, but don’t know if life insurers use obesity as a pricing factor.
When I wasn’t in a position to decide my own client list, I used to hate working for some of the large companies with high sugar products. Felt like consulting for Philip Morris or something. I remember one corporate HQ had giant posters in their cafeteria talking about how scientists didn’t find a causative relationship between sugar and childhood health complications, and it felt just like the classic “nine out of ten doctors recommended XYZ brand cigarettes.”
But let’s be fair, if every bar and liquor store switched to selling meth and kids dad’s brought them their first meth on their twenty first birthday, weddings had a traditional opening the meth moment, etc then things would be a lot worse.
But my profits!!!
- alcohol and prison companies
So all the guys locked up with mandatory minimum sentences will be released now, right? Right?
There are exactly zero federal prisoners incarcerated for marijuana possession.
Was this the review Biden asked for awhile back?
Yes,I believe so
It’s coming this summer. It’s a political winner for Diamond Joe.
Marijuana is currently classified as Schedule I, reserved for the most dangerous controlled substances, including heroin and LSD.
Fucking christ lmao.
LSD doesn’t belong on Schedule I either.
i have a feeling biden will finally get this done right before the election. hopefully this will mobilize the young enough to combat the hoards of jug hooters
My guess is he promises to get it done next term tho
This is the politician way.
What more does Biden need to do? They already directed HHS to consider reclassifying it from schedule I to III and HHS made their recommendation to the DEA who classifies the drugs. I thought it was up to the DEA now?
LOL “jug hooters”… I love it!
This is nothing new. Nixon commissioned a report that said the exact same thing 50 years ago.
Of course fucking Nixon ignored the report so that he and the rest of the right fuckos could use pot as a legal (and often physical of course) cudgel against black people and hippies.
I wonder what pain relief drugs would be available if the Executive Branch followed science.
At this point I trust cannabis more than I trust HFC. No one is trying to sneak cannabis in my food and cannabis doesn’t make me fat.
I don’t know, man… Those munchies are killer, man… /s
Ok fine if you consumed pot every day it could cause issues.
I think research has shown that every day tokers actually have a lower body fat percentage than the average. I actually get a high-protein granola from the store that has hemp seeds in it, they are high in amino acids and protein. It isn’t super obvious it has hemp in it too so in a way they did sneak cannabis into it haha.
Well no shit.
Wait, Ketamine and lean are schedule three* drugs? I thought those were pretty addictive and pretty damaging?
Edited number
Schedule I means not legal for any purpose, so no. Ketamine is used medically and “lean” is a fairly mild opiate, and also used medically (it’s a cough syrup, where did you think it came from?). Drugs like that are schedule ii-iv.
Schedule 3
Whoops, meant to say “aren’t”
Ketamine has medical applications such as being commonly used as an anesthetic in short term procedures and with those who do not respond positively to opioids. Ketamine is classified under low addiction risk as it’s not physically addicting as in its users do not suffer from withdrawal. The problem with ketamine however is that it helps users cope with a plethora of different mental illnesses which in itself is addictive.
Glad it meets the criteria.
It never should have been “classified” or “scheduled”.
Or alcohol should be schedule 1.
Cannabis being a “schedule 1” drug (one of the safest drugs we can consume) while alcohol (an extremely dangerous [to society and individuals] drug that is also addictive) is UNSCHEDULED and PROMOTED is beyond absurd.
Make anything make sense.
Money. That’s how it makes sense.
This article seems to imply that stopping heavy marijuana use can lead to withdrawal symptoms.
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that.
There’s definitely symptoms. Irritability being the main one.
Trouble sleeping is another one. It’s not a heroin withdrawal, but it’s there.
Inability to sleep and lack of appetite are also pretty common.
Goku goes SSII when he’s resting on his T break weekends
It said mild withdrawal symptoms. Nothing like alcohol or cocaine withdrawal.
The body is going to react to anything that it stops getting after it has been getting it consistently. Caffeine is perfectly legal and I get bad migraines from quitting it.
Irritability, sleep problems, night sweats, appetite issues, etc. These are 100% withdrawl effects for some heavy or frequent cannabis users who stop cold turkey.
Is it cocaine or heroin withdrawl? Absolutely not. But we don’t do anyone any favours pretending that people don’t experience these symptoms when stopping (though, on the other hand, not everyone does. Depends how heavy/long you’ve been imbibing and individual differences in body chemistry).
Crazy vivid dreams after stopping long term use as well.
Not necessarily a negative withdrawal effect, although the sudden vivid dreams can be extra scary if the dreams aren’t happy dreams
Irritability, sleep problems, night sweats, appetite issues,
Tbf, these are also some of the issues that starting weed helped me fix probably because ADHD.
Thing is, I 100% believe you. Cannabis can help with these kind of problems too, depending on the person.
My only gripe is when people say “Lol, no one gets withdrawl symptoms when they stop smoking weed”. It’s true that not everyone experiences it, but a) when I have stopped cold turkey for anything more than a few days, I personally have these problems, with a fairly predictable timeframe/duration, and b) I don’t seem to be the only one who does*
Want to make it clear that I really like cannabis, and it can legitimately be a game changer for some people’s conditions. But it’s important to balance out the actual good and the actual bad when talking about it - cannabis is neither 100% perfect for everyone every time, nor is it the Devil’s Lettuce that will lead to doing bumps of heroin on a pile of dead babies and an unhealthy love of freeform jazz. The truth’s in the middle - it has benefits as well as downsides, and different people experience both to different degrees.
*There is, of course, an argument to be made that people who get ‘hit hard’ with withdrawl effects do so because they were self-medicating for some unrecognized condition. I don’t necessarily buy that for all cases, but it’s worth thinking about.
Very vivid dreams for a week count?
That’s about it. I am getting a good amount of pushback from people who very much like the idea that being able to dream again and not being high are withdrawl.
And sure, they’re all technically correct in the most pedantic way.
When I smoke more regularly everyday and stop suddenly I can feel horribly depressed, have trouble eating and sleeping, there are pretty widely recognized withdrawal symptoms though they aren’t as bad for everyone. Ask a therapist who works with substance abuse if weed has any withdrawal symptoms, plenty of people have trouble taking breaks or stopping because it can be hard for some to tolerate the symptoms. Obviously it’s not the same as something like heroin or benzos but it’s more than just more dreams.
Obviously it’s not the same as something like heroin or benzos but it’s more than just more dreams.
It’s not even the same as caffeine, my dude.
True, I feel much worse physically when lacking caffeine lol.
