DEA to reclass marijuana to Schedule III
In a historic shift, the U.S. moves to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, AP sources say.
Bout damn time
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Critics point out that as a Schedule III drug, marijuana would remain regulated by the DEA. That means the roughly 15,000 cannabis dispensaries in the U.S. would have to register with the DEA like regular pharmacies and fulfill strict reporting requirements, something that they are loath to do and that the DEA is ill equipped to handle.
Aren't these dispensaries currently registered with the DEA? Why would lowering it on the schedule change that?
I think currently they're not. They're registered to their state as they're still technically illegal at the federal level. The DEA has taken kind of a don't ask don't tell approach to marijuana and is currently relying on a patchwork of state regulations to manage it because for a variety of (terrible) reasons they haven't taken the sane step of reclassifying it. It honestly shouldn't be a scheduled drug or at worst a schedule 4. Moving it from schedule 1 to 3 is better than nothing, but it's still a chicken shit maneuver.
Devil's advocate here...
I'm pretty sure the DEA has a ton of funding directly tied to Marijuana enforcement, they can't just deschedule it entirely without losing that funding immediately. Those funding requirements need to be reclassified for other uses.
They are registered to the various states programs, but I can’t imagine there is a way to register with the DEA to sell a Schedule 1 drug for recreational use.
As someone unfamiliar with the law my guess would be that the DEA doesn't have mechanisms in place to register distributors of schedule 1 substances, since it doesn't recognize them as having any legitimate use.
Nah. As a schedule I, it's in the same category as things like meth. Tito your corner drug dealer ain't telling the feds where he's selling, right?
Meth is schedule 2. Which highlights how absurd cannabis being schedule 1 for so long was.
My bad! I just assumed.
Schedule I is reserved for only the most vile drugs, like LSD!
And crack... But not powder cocaine.
I'm sure that has NOTHING to do with the types of people who tend to use one or the other.
I mean, cocaine hydrochloride (aka powder cocaine) does have medical uses. No, seriously. In the form of a nasal spray before certain kinds of nasal surgeries as a local anesthetic. According to my wife it also opens your sinuses like nothing else, as she's had a couple of such surgeries.
There is some evidence suggesting there's a higher risk for abuse and dependence when cocaine is injected or smoked as opposed to intranasal use, but the research there is kinda limited. While the racial angle is certainly relevant, that there is no accepted medical use for cocaine base (aka crack) but there is for cocaine hydrochloride probably also plays a part in why crack is in the "no medical uses" schedule and cocaine hydrochloride is in the same schedule as fentanyl (you know, the one for highly abusable drugs that do have accepted medical applications). The laws calling out crack specifically as opposed to merely referencing the drug schedules are all about race though.
It also means regular pharmacies can sell it, and via normal banking channels.
