DEA Rejects Attempt To Loosen Federal Restrictions On Marijuana

[SticksnStones]

54. Interesting article in High Times

Regarding the legal framework of declassifying marijuana. The author's take is basically that the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) which provides the framework for the DEA in this matter, lacks the teeth to be able to make the change and instead offers a non-challengeable way to keep turning down requests to reclassify.

Nonetheless, the decision not to reschedule marijuana is good news for the marijuana reform movement as it utterly discredits the use of the CSA as a regulatory model for cannabis and sends a clear signal to Congress that new legislation is needed to legalize and regulate marijuana in the United States.

The CSA serves to provide a regulatory framework for proprietary pharmaceutical drugs, which, because of their abuse potential, have a risk of being diverted from regulated to unregulated markets. The CSA can only be effective for drugs with two characteristics: they are manufactured by pharmaceutical companies with limited and easily monitored production, and they are subject to rigorous and capital-extensive clinical studies under supervision of the Food and Drug Administration.

Marijuana does not have these characteristics, and this is why it will not be removed from Schedule I of the CSA by the DEA.

snip//

To many, this creates an obvious paradox—because the drug doesn’t fit the conventional form of a pharmaceutical drug and is widely accepted and used by the public as an effective drug, it can’t be recognized as a drug under the standards embedded in the Controlled Substances Act by Congress. The problem here is not with marijuana, nor with the decisions made by the public, but instead with the standards created by Congress.

Thus, the only remedy to this conflict is for Congress to remove marijuana from the CSA and regulate it via more appropriate legislation.

NSFW link to High Times (I only get it for the articles, I don't look at the pictures )

http://hightimes.com/culture/pot-matters-inside-the-deas-latest-refusal-to-reschedule-marijuana-pt-1/