WASHINGTON – The Department of Health and Human Services is recommending that marijuana be reinstated as a less dangerous and legal Schedule III drug after President Biden ordered a review last year.
Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine issued the recommendation in an Aug. 29 letter to Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.
“The DEA has the ultimate authority to schedule or reschedule drugs under the Controlled Substances Act. The DEA will now begin its review,” a DEA representative said in a statement to the publication Marijuana Moment.
Marijuana has been a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act since the 1970s, making it a federal crime to possess it for any reason outside of limited research — although most states now allow recreational or medicinal use of marijuana with the approval of federal prosecutors.
Schedule I drugs are considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medicinal value. The strictest categories include heroin and LSD.
Schedule III substances, on the other hand, are considered to pose a moderate or low risk of abuse and dependence. These include ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone.
The Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that marijuana be reclassified as a legal Schedule III drug.AP Photo/Mark Thiessen
Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine issued the recommendation in a letter to Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram.AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
The reform could pave the way for the state’s legal marijuana businesses to gain easier access to banking services by reassuring nervous financial institutions.
The rescheduling move could also allow scientists to research more easily and doctors to prescribe the drug more conventionally. Currently, medical experts “recommend” marijuana in states where it is legal.
Biden asked for a reassessment of pot’s status last October — weeks before the midterm elections — and paired the request with a massive pardon for people convicted federally of simple marijuana possession.
Marijuana has been a Schedule I drug since the Controlled Substances Act of 1971. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The president’s mass pardon was criticized as a stunt by marijuana activists and federal inmates who noted that all of the estimated 2,700 federal pot inmates believed to be behind bars for selling rather than just possessing pot.
Angry marijuana advocates rallied outside the White House fence at the time and played up Biden’s 2019 debate stage pledge to release everyone in prison for marijuana, which they say he has failed to deliver.
Biden, 80, wrote some of the nation’s toughest federal drug laws in the 1980s and ’90s and says he still opposes the legalization of marijuana, despite roughly two-thirds backing the reform in national polls, which favor decriminalization measures. which is simpler.
Since 2012, 23 states, three US territories and the District of Columbia have legalized the possession of recreational marijuana under local laws. Almost all states now allow drugs or derived compounds for medical use.
HHS and DEA did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
