Justice Department formally moves to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug in historic shift

... And it's still illegal to carry on federal land (including boarders). This is a win but it's a fucking minor one.

Amazingly enough after Canada legalized weed our country didn't instantly fall into anarchy.

US stayes that legalized weed had all of the predicted positive outcomes like reduced crime related to weed, increased taxes because it is taxed, etc.

You know, the obvious outcomes for anyone who doesn't buy into reefer madness.
- The oligarchs need more time to monopolize the market. Can't have folks growing their own plants when there's money to be made now
  
  /s because internet
- Legalizing weed would drastically reduce the prison population of America.
  
  And we all know how bad that would be.
  
  /s
Still waiting on Congress to decriminalize and expunge records.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3617
Amazingly enough after Canada legalized weed our country didn't instantly fall into anarchy.

Not yet my friend, not yet /s
I don’t think you’ve visited enough Canadian online communities.

If you ask the internet, specifically Reddit, Galen Loblaw will arrest you for buying 30% off stewing beef at the self scan, and while you’re shopping your car will have been stolen and TFWs will have taken your job.
- Galen Weston is definitely a huge asshole, but I'd blame that one more on capitalism and greed. The weed helps us endure the price fixing bullshittery.
- TFWs will have taken your job.
  
  That Feeling When’s?
- Those are primarily ppl larping as canucks, and the same stupid 20% of the population that believes their bullshit as any other country. Like the morons wearing maga hats at a clownvoy rally.
  
  If you go into a thread with real Canadians in it, you will most likely not see anybody having a problem with foreign workers or immigration.
  
  Galen Weston can fucking die though... We all agree on that.
Admittedly I'm sitting here in Winnipeg, having just taken a huge bong rip but I would sincerely challenge your claims that our country didn't fall into anarchy post legalisation.

I'm not saying weed is the cause, in fact I believe more people should take a toke but seeing everything around me going to shit like it is, seeing it accelerate since '19 doesn't really help with this Indica induced anxiety. Trucker convoy, campuses being taken hostage, food banks over run.... This ain't been a good run bro.
- I agree that weed wasn't the cause - I'd also argue that it isn't Canada as much as the whole fucking world going to pot. And, as much as I'd hate the conservatives even more, neoliberalism has been absolutely wrecking us. Things like food banks, health care, public transit, and the post service don't need to be independently profitable. Raise our fucking taxes and fund this shit right.

Hey a half a loaf. Its Zenos paradox of legalization. With progress like this, in another 40 years we'll be another halfway there to legalization.

It will at least open up research for cannabis drug development into FDA approved products.
- It also basically will legalize Medical cannabis federally. This could lead to many other benefits. Get a medical card, it's legit with the state and the feds, then there shouldn't be any grounds for drug tests to affect your employment.
- Its 10 years too late for anyone to care I think. Democrats should have just straight up legalized under Obama, and even if they legalized now, they aren't going to be making major points off this politically. Its just jerk-off material for the commentary crowd. If it isn't going to make a difference to peoples lived experience, it isn't worth pursuing.
That all depends on when Democrats get congressional majority. Congress is responsible for legislative decriminalization.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3617
- You make the assumption that Democrats (the politicians, not the voters) actually see this as a legislative priority.
For people like me who use it medicinally, this is a huge win.
Society is like a big vehicle. It takes time to change its course. Calm down.
- Calm down.
  
  The world doesn't actually improve in fits an starts. Incrementalism is a fallacy. The world improves in large sweeping movements that are eventually ground backwards. We make major improvement through bold action, not trivial improvements.
  
  I have no obligation to support a muted political movement incapable of accomplishing its purported objectives.
  
  US Democrats could have done this a decade ago. They could have codified abortion rights. They could have made so many things a priority: they choose not to. I owe nothing to a failed approach to politics.

So it moves to be rescheduled but is just being sent to DEA for them to now think about it?

I get it's news but I don't see what is actually changing

Its the next major step in the process of getting it rescheduled. Each step could potentially end that process, so each movement forward is great news.
The DEA already agreed to the FDA’s Schedule III recommendation. Now it’s open for 60 days of public comment.

If there’s no change in mind, it gets passed to up the to both HHS and DOJ as approvals, then sent to Biden to sign off. (I think)
the government is so pathetically slow and people love to celebrate this bullshit facade of progress for some reason. this should've been done 20 fucking years ago, i'm not giving them props for that now. not a chance.
- Best time to make a change was 20 years ago. Second best time is now. Progress is progress. Would you rather it continue to not happen?
- No kidding especially after 40 fucking states have medical marijuana programs while the DEA still considers it Schedule I "high potential for abuse with no known medical use."

There's two things this changes.

Easier to research.
We get a lot less tax money from it.

For 1, it's not that much of a gain, we don't need more studies to show it's safe. That's been accomplished, and it wasn't that hard to do a study the last couple years.

For 2, tax money was the biggest reason states could be convinced to legalize.

There's a little bit of a 3 involved. I forget the specifics from an earlier article, but I read something about while a lower schedule may let them transition from cash only to banking, the DEA can still seize all their funds because it's on the schedule. It's just now they can do it from a computer.

When they don't use banks, at least the DEA had to actually show up and ~~steal~~ seize their cash.

So say a Republican takes office and is pissed at Cali, he can tell the DEA to freeze and seize the bank accounts of every business and person connected to the cannabis industry.

And it'd all be 100% legal, take very little effort, and can easily be converted into some kind of "border security" bullshit like building a giant pointless wall.

I dunno, lately I keep getting frustrated at people never realizing what shit can naturally lead to. Maybe my standards for planning ahead need lowered?

I just don't understand why this is acceptable when Biden told us decriminalization was the goal.

A co.plete removal from the schedule would have been that, and would have accomplished a lot and taken the same effort as this. I don't see why we don't try to actually fix shit.

I don’t see why we don’t try to actually fix shit.

Because then they can't keep kicking the can down the road for the next election.

Gotta keep that voter base involved somehow, and when you aren't actually gonna give them anything to be happy about, you've got to trot out nice little lies you'll never follow through with to make them get out to vote.
- Exactly why I'm not playing this year. I give up.
Biden is right of Reagan.

Get a clue.

Dems are not in favor of legalization. Neither are liberals.
- Biden is right of Reagan.
  
  On which policies?
  
  Dems are not in favor of legalization.
  
  Then why has literally every single legalization come from democrats?
- Man I hope you're the dumbest motherfucker on this website. I don't think I can take anything worse.

Still illegal without prescription

Will they retroactively commute sentences of people who were charged with the previous classification?

No, because it's still illegal. This reclassification is a compromise, not a solution.
- baby steps.
Biden has done what he is able to do. He proclaimed presidential pardon for federal marijuana charges in late 2022. However, the executive branch has no authority to impact state level charges, which would likely be the vast majority of people affected by marijuana policing over time. In a world where government works as intended, state level organizations should take their cues from what the federal government is doing, but, as I understand it, they are not necessarily beholden to slavishly adopt the federal posture. Perhaps someone with a deeper understanding might illuminate us further.
- That's about right.
  
  Federal prosecution is rare. If they charge you with marijuana possession at the federal level, then there's probably a list of a dozen other charges on top of it, and at least one of them is the serious thing they're actually after you for. Feds don't waste their time with this shit unless there's a bigger reason.
  
  So what Biden did has very little practical effect. A bunch of people got one charge among many taken off their record. That's what he's able to do with just a stroke of a pen. The rest is dependent on states, federal congress, or the vast federal bureaucracy.

Will this allow dispenseries and retail stores to use banking?

Probably not yet...biggest advantage of moving from Sch 1 to Sch 3 is that it means federal research grants/money can be used now to determine what the actual medicinal uses.
- Nice. So we'll publicly fund the research and the drug companies get a bunch of new medicines and don't have to pay for the rights.
No. It is still a controlled substance. They have merely lowered it's classification rather than DE-classifying it entirely, which is what they should have done.

So how many other agencies have to sign off on this?

As many as they can possibly require so that this doesn’t finish before Trump is inaugurated next year. Then he can kill it and the democrats can recycle the campaign material in 2028.

What happened to legalization?

The President can initiate rescheduling, but does not have the power to decriminalize (legalize) a drug on their own. That requires an act of Congress. The current bill for decriminalization and record expungement is in the House with 113 Democrat cosponsors. We’re just waiting on Republicans to come around.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3617/cosponsors
In all but a handful of states, you can buy almost anything you want online and have it legally shipped to you.
- You're talking about state law, and this is federal law

This is not a win, don't mistake it. They reclassified it and now it's going to be even hard to legalize because they'll use the excuse "we reclassified it already!". Full legalization is what we need, this doesn't actually change shit. Marijuana being illegal is one of the most racist laws we have.

Only on lemmy would Biden drastically reducing a very stupid and racist drug law that has persisted for decades be a bad thing.

Changing the classification away from "its basically heroin" changes a lot actually. Research funding, federal therapeutic use, authorized law enforcement actions, banking laws, these are all able to be shifted and changed in the context of weed now.

Its not the end of federal legalization attempts, it's the start. It drastically normalizes something at a federal level that has already been legalized at a state level. That's how you fully legalize it.

It's not some imagined set back because of weak "we did enough already" arguments that no one actually believes, especially with federal legalization at 70% popularity.
- Only on lemmy would Biden drastically reduceding a very stupid and racist drug classification that has persisted for decades be a bad thing.
  
  Lemmy is so full of extremists it's insane. Nothing but unwavering ideological commitment is accepted by any side. There is no positive news, only unethical compromise.
- federal legalization at 70% popularity
  
  You just made clear that we don't have a system that represents the people. How exactly does it become legal now with the argument "we just reclassified it"? When does that happen? 2, 5, 10 years from now?
If you're so up in arms about the inherent racism in the criminalization and exploitation of cannabis, maybe don't use the manufactured term "marijuana", hmm? Coined to sound foreign (yes, Spanish specifically), it's part of the whole plan in the first place. 🤫
- manufactured term “marijuana”
  
  In accordance with my initial point that it's a racist law to keep it illegal, I'll use cannabis from now on. Reading the history of the usage of the term "marijuana/marihuana/mariguana".
  
  It's funny how we try to regulate a plant, yet the term cannabis could be referring to industrial hemp or the dankest highest THC concentration cultivar possible.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_sativa#Cultivars
  
  Broadly, there are three main cultivar groups of cannabis that are cultivated today:
  
  Cultivars primarily cultivated for their fibre, characterized by long stems and little branching.[21]
  
  Cultivars grown for seed which can be eaten entirely raw or from which hemp oil is extracted.
  
  Cultivars grown for medicinal or recreational purposes, characterized by extensive branching to maximize the number of flowers.[21]
  
  A nominal if not legal distinction is often made between industrial hemp, with concentrations of psychoactive compounds far too low to be useful for that purpose, and marijuana.
- glad we got an expert to clear that up

Now if we could just agree that a plant that grows naturally is not a fucking drug

Just because something psychoactive grows in nature doesn't mean it is not a drug. Anything that has a physical or psychoactive effect, or anything at all beyond nutrition, is a drug. DMT, Salvia, Psilocin, Mescaline, Phenethylamine, Opium, these are all indeed drugs.

The reason you said this is because the word drug has a (very unfair) negative association because it is used as a blanket term to describe the reason someone acts a certain way on them, therefore making it seem that all drugs are bad (drugs, like anything in life, are only bad if you abuse them).
- I tend to associate the word drug with something made in a lab for a medicinal or elective purpose. Hence why we call pharmacies "Drug Stores" and not "Herbal Stations"
- there is a very specific legal definition of a drug which the FDA has clarified as anything that is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.