The president can order agencies to reschedule it, which makes it defacto legal in a lot of states, and means federal employees in states where it’s legal can use, including military.
She should do that asap, because the fight to actually legalize is a lot harder.
I don’t want to see her say it needs to be legalized and then refuse to take any step thats not the hardest
Biden already started that process to move it to schedule 3. It’s been moving through slowly but it’s got a public hearing on December 2nd
The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of full deschedule/legalization, but all he’s pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they’ll probably go to 2 because fuck you that’s why. Hopefully Harris can lean into it a little harder than Biden has.
As a senator Harris introduced bills that would’ve fully legalized it. Meanwhile I don’t think Biden ever publicly said he wanted full legalization
I think there’s pretty good odds she would go further than Biden in executive action alone
all he’s pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they’ll probably go to 2 because fuck you that’s why
I figure you’re partially joking but they can’t really make it 2. The HHS recommendation was 3 and even the DEA kind of has to agree even if they don’t want to. It would have been super controversial to do something else, they’re mainly supposed to follow it through with the rulemaking process unless they’re willing to make a serious case. And even then it would probably be to leave it where it is.
One of the theories going around as to why they added the hearing is that they wanted to take the heat off themselves for the call they’ve made by really drawing out the public consultation. Like people will be mad at them for following the recommendation so they want to make a big show of the fact they’re listening to concerns etc.
Hopefully Harris can take some stronger action or legalize through executive order or something. Schedule III is better but it’s then in the same class as ketamine. No judgement of people who like ketamine but COME ON
The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of full deschedule/legalization, but all he’s pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they’ll probably go to 2 because fuck you that’s why
The Lesser Evil Party in a nutshell 😮💨
Granted, it’s of course still a MUCH lesser evil than the American Fascist Party, but fucking HELL! Your very bleak guess is probably the best case scenario with these fuckers!
Rescheduling is a lot more complicated than that. The president can not just wave a wand and make it legal. Congress could pass a law doing so, but they are not going to do that. The other way is via the Controlled Substances Act which is, to put it mildly, is a cluster fuck.
In a nutshell, administrative rescheduling begins when an actor—the Secretary of Health and Human Services or an outside interested party—files a petition with the Attorney General or he initiates the process himself. The Attorney General forwards the request to the HHS Secretary asking for a scientific and medical evaluation and recommendation, as specified by 23 USC 811(b-c). HHS, via the Food and Drug Administration conducts an assessment and returns a recommendation to the Attorney General “in a timely manner.” The Attorney General, often through the Drug Enforcement Administration, conducts its own concurrent and independent review of the evidence in order to determine whether a drug should be scheduled, rescheduled, or removed from control entirely—depending on the initial request in the petition.
If the Attorney General finds sufficient evidence that a change in scheduling is warranted he then initiates the first stages of a standard rulemaking process, consistent with the Administrative Procedures Act. During rulemaking and consistent with Executive Order 12866, if the White House—through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of information and Regulatory Affairs—determines the rule to be “significant,” it will conduct a regulatory review of the proposed rule—a very likely outcome given the criteria in the EO.
FYI, Biden already initiated this process to reschedule marijuana in 2022. At this point, it has been reviewed and the Attorney General has submitted a rule change to the DEA. They will have a public comment period which they will no doubt drag out as long as possible. If approved, marijuana will be reclassified at the same level as steroids (schedule III). It is disappointing that Biden only requested changing the schedule rather than descheduling it all together. Not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than now.
So technically, the president could order the people he is in charge of to deschedule the drug and to do it immediately by everyone agreeing that the change is not significant.
If they refuse he could just keep firing people until someone agrees.
The law requires certain time frames for comment periods and he cannot just ignore those. He also cannot just fire anyone he wants. That is one of the things Project 2025 includes. Giving the president to fire any federal employee at will is a bad idea.
The only immediate thing he might do is issue an executive order making Marijuana a very low priority offense and telling DoJ to direct limited enforcement and prosecution resources elswhere.
Nope, the president doesn’t have the legal authority to give that order. He has the legal authority to order them to consider the question, which is the process that’s going on.
It is disappointing that Biden only requested changing the schedule rather than descheduling it all together. Not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than now.
Which is actually the reasonable thing to do here. Marijuana is not something that doesn’t have brain-altering side effects. It has pretty clear effects which could impair driving, etc - It doesn’t need to be descheduled completely; that would be asinine.
Is alcohol scheduled? Is it regulated? I feel like morons are making excuses for control because it’s got stigma. You know the real reason weed is a schedule 1?
Holy shit the NSA, FBI and CIA will finallyl get competent, weed smoking engineers.
PirateSoftware’s CEO, Thor, once saidnl in a stream how national security relies on furry conventions flights making it to and from conventions safely, and that there is nearly no bigger single point of failure on our security infrastructure. Those planes go down and we have a serious problem.
I think he’s right.
Canadian here.
It’s been fully legal for… 5 years? We haven’t fallen apart yet!
There’s some people working on that, but they aren’t the stoner type.
Last year Michigan received about 290 million in weed taxes, around 90 went to municipalities and county governments, 100 million to schools, and 100 million to roads.
It’s crazy to me how cheap it is. Like, they could double the taxes and it would still feel incredibly affordable when compared to alcohol.
What are the prices in Michigan? One of the complaints in Colorado is that the prices (for those without red cards, anyway) were set so high that some people were still resorting to the black market.
It was cheap and high quality in Colorado for the first few years, just long enough to kill off the black market. Now it’s not as strong and has doubled in price. I only do edibles so I can’t speak to the plant quality but the THC content per serving gets lower every year it seems.
I’ll believe it when it happens. I can only get my hopes up so many times
Saying, “we need to” is about as noncommittal as not saying anything at all. That’s like my girlfriend pointing out that the kitchen is a mess and me saying “yeah we really need to do the dishes”.
She has no control over it, the only thing she can do is what Biden did, ask them to investigate it and reschedule it. The executive branch does not make laws. That’s on the Senate/Congress. The number of people arrested for marijuana by the federal government isn’t the number of people in prison/jail for it. They are/and will be arrested by states. A law must be written to superseed state laws on marijuana… As the president cannot pardon people from state laws.
Vote for new senators/Congress members… The only 1 the president puts in place is the Vice President in the Senate.
