it’s just so anachronistic that it’s still illegal anywhere. nobody deserves criminal prosecution for any drug, let alone marijuana. it should be trivial paper shuffling to fix it too, it’s not like it needs funding or infrastructure. just hit the fucking button!
I think it actually requires passing a federal bill, but I’m not honestly sure. Either way I’m with you, it should never have been made illegal and it certainly didn’t still be federally illegal today…
AFAIK the DEA and drug scheduling is under the executive branch so someone like Biden should be able to have it rescheduled, but so far all we’ve gotten from him is a committee to study whether marijuana is dangerous or not as roughly half the country have already fully legalized it and probably 2/3 have it legal for medicinal purposes.
The President can’t just order DEA to unschedule it because it would very likely be a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (the same thing that the Supreme Court said Trump violated when he tried to end DACA). Just ending the scheduling altogether with no strings attached would really need an act of Congress to be safe from being overturned by the SCOTUS.
A few months ago, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services submitted a formal recommendation to the DEA to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III. It’s now in the DEA’s hands. Schedule III means if you have a prescription, you can no longer get fired for it if you test positive and it’s recognized as having real medical value with moderate to low physical dependence. Not ideal, but complete unscheduling is something the DEA would never go along with. Rescheduling or an act of Congress are the best bets, and Biden has formally requested the DEA to do the former.
I think weed is an issue where Biden’s personal life experience and age show more than just about anywhere else. He’s an old devout Catholic boomer that doesn’t even drink and has a son that’s had a very public struggle with drug addiction. I don’t think he’s ever going to exactly be a champion of legalization.
It’s definitely something that can be criticized, but in the grand scheme of things, given that federal prosecution of marijuana “crimes” are basically non-existent nowadays anyway, it’s a pretty small matter for me. You are right though that he has taken a step towards potentially rescheduling it, which is definitely a step in the right direction.
More importantly, Ohio voted to protect reproductive rights!!! 👍
OK OK there are like 10 posts about that already, let us have our marijuana thread. 😉
Was fairly tongue in cheek, but when I fired up kbin and hit the 12 hour filter (as is my usual) I think three or four of the top ten posts were about Ohio abortion rights. Had to dig further to find this one.
I’m not really grumpy about it being mentioned here though, just a playful early morning comment.
Yeah it’s just that this headline was the only one I saw for a while, and I didn’t see anyone mention it in the comments either! So I’m happy to spread the word. Glad to mention it here. Surely some people saw one or the other first, and we’re gonna be shouting out in the streets.
Nope, not as important. Marijuana legalization affects the freedom of more citizens than access to abortion.
Both should be legal of course.
OHIGHO
Between the marijuana and women’s rights, conservatives must be losing their goddamned minds with rage right now.
I think weed is probably a pretty divisive issue in the party. I love in Oregon and know a ton of die-hard, Trump lovin’ Republicans who love weed and have long before it was legalized. I think it’s mostly the religious fundamentalists in the south and places like Utah/Idaho who oppose it while the rest probably don’t care at this point.
The Tea Party rode their way up on the coattails of classic Libertarians. The basically want to legalize everything from smoking weed to killing gays and owning people. “Freedom”
When it looks like Republicans are confused and cannibalizing themselves, it’s because of the bloc that married Trump.
At this point it’s probably helpful to appreciate that the only reason weed is federally illegal is that the Nixon administration needed a pretext to expand the police state so that it could go after the antiwar left and brown people.
Since then, having drugs like weed be illegal gives cops discretion to target ‘likely suspects’, which basically can mean ‘brown people’ and anyone they don’t like the look of
The basically want to legalize everything from smoking weed
Yes
killing gays and owning people.
No
I have some high school classmates who grew up in Oregon in the seventies and eighties. As I understand things, weed is a long standing culture in Oregon that was more or less openly tolerated to grow your own back in the day. Present day situation doesn’t surprise me at all.
I did a ride along with an Ohio police department years ago. Marijuana was present at damn near every scene we responded to. Usually it was the least of their concern. Scatter it, grind it into the dirt, move on. Barely worth mentioning in the paperwork.
It’s been a long time coming and I’m glad they finally made it official.
Holy shit I didn’t know it was that many
And if you count the states that have it decriminalized and or offer prescriptions from Dr. Nick or Dr. Spaceman, then there aren’t very many holdouts left.
Biden should just run on abortions and weed next year. Make it federal if the democrats can take back enough of the house and hold the senate.
He can’t. He can recommend to the CSA that it be descheduled from a schedule 1 controlled substance (and that recommendation carries a lot of weight), put in place agents who favor descheduling it, or order DEA, HHS, and FDA to consider administrative descheduling.
Vote out Republicans. That’s the only way to make sure it becomes legal.
He can’t and as another commenter pointed out his health panel submitted a research paper along with a recommendation to move cannabis to a schedule three drug.
He’s already doing what you want it’s just not loud about it so you don’t know.
If you wanted to be fully legal you’re going to need to start writing your congressional representatives because they’re the ones who can do it
I don’t know if people even think about voting in terms of campaign promises anymore. They never pull through. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me every fucking 2 years for my entire adult life, shame on me.
Just keep it honest: Not fascist vs fascist. Weed will stay illegal, climate will continue to spiral, wealth gap will continue to increase, healthcare will continue to be abusive, abortion will continue to rely on flimsy court decisions, etc. But at least we’ll keep having elections, so we’ve got that going for us.
This is what happens when the system boils down to two parties. Neither party has a reason to fulfill any promises because what’s the voter going to do, vote for the other party that’s even less aligned with their political views? GOP is definitely putting that to the test to see how extremist they can get while still having some modicum of power, but what if everyone does end up voting democrat? Well then there’s no reason to democrats to promise anything because it’s not like people are going to vote for anyone else. The entire system is rotten.
With all due respect, he did everything in his power and spent a lot of political capital executing on the topics in question.
Biden shocked me on what he did for pot, and what he tried to do for student loans. I thought it was hot air.
The question is whether Biden is a fascist because the Far Right sued him and won over student loans, or because the DEA continues to laugh at him when he asks them to change Weed’s classification (because he cannot, he can only stop prosecutions and free prisoners, which he has done)
Thank you Dr Space Man!
It’s not enough. And it should be federally legal.
Just a reminder as people mostly know but it’s worth repeating: Marijuana is a schedule 1 substance in the same category as heroin, fucking heroin, which is absolutely fucking asinine. Psilocybin is up there too and also just as retarded.
This all being said at least we’re making some slow progress.
