Schedule 1 says that the drug has no medicinal value. 23 soon to be 24,25,26... think that it has some value.

off of marijuana.

for both states and Feds.

Police seizures....legal ones, that is...don't gain the Feds anything, I think....?
and it takes a big bust to gain much for most places.
there are a few big cities which might be making enough money from seizures.

Contrast that with every state earning millions from legal pot.

Last edited Fri Jun 20, 2014, 11:43 PM - Edit history (1)

No excuses for the pressures of "the stakeholders" for the shiftless politicians.

--imm

Along with verification of the many cases of hopeless prognosis' reversed should prove the case for rescheduling the drug. Furthermore, simply claiming it a sleep aid should be easy enough to make the change. ..compared to most prescription sleep aids it is hardly more addictive. ..

.... about people deciding to try to make money off of CBD's qualities and marketing it for applications it's really not useful for. We don't want to see it turn into the next laetrile and get bandied about as a cancer cure when we don't know if it works (or worse, if a commercial formulation vs extracting the chemical at home has a risk that we don't know about). From what I understand there are a lot of efforts to make sure families in Colorado are able to get access to the high-CBD strains even though it's probably just as costly to grow as recreational strains. And yes, I do believe that enough profit margin to make the business sustainable is reasonable. But I don't want to see people being ripped off thinking that this is their only shot, only to be sold snake oil.

Still, a double-blind study of frequency of seizures with children already on a common regimen of anti-epileptic maintenance drugs with CBD oil or a lookalike placebo oil given to families in gelatin capsules (at this point it would be unethical to study it in any other way except as an adjunct treatment) would be very worthwhile to have done, and it can't be done until the FDA and DEA say they can.

To have done what they have done with this drug while approving drug after drug with truly unbelievable side effects, including physical addiction, for minor ailments. In light of this and there never having been a single death attributed to this most prolific of black market products used by a huge number of people for generations, there is no excuse for this to still be schedule one...aside from prison industrial complex enrichment and law enforcement incomes.

He could strip the funding from the war on drugs and apply it to some other enforcement or treatment.

The doctor gave her 2 weeks (which he was right about), and said she's about to enter severe pain.
Her daughter put her on some kind of marijuana regimen—and she actually started eating again; she had no complaints about pain but passed in her sleep one night.

So, there is definitely—100%—something in the medical marijuana usage.

of that group I would grant you Bush the Least was a loser, but that's still 3 to 1.

Who has multiple schlerosis?

not because of the plant itself, thats fine, but because of the criminality attached to it people lose their freedom, their property, their families, their health, their right to vote, they lose their jobs, their social status, their young children, and in some cases when some trigger happy steroid induced cops bust into the wrong address at 3am and start shooting things and blowing shit up, people lose their lives.

The names of the most creative scientists, and artists of all kinds that occasionally or regularly smoke pot would blow your mind.

... and not scientifically motivated; its about damned time.

The ONLY reason cannabis is a schedule I drug is because Richard Nixon wanted it and other schedule I substances rated as such. His own counsel that he appointed told him to decriminalize, but he wanted to be able to use the drug schedule against his political enemies.

At that time, Nixon named them, which you can hear on his tapes... They were the Jews, the psychiatrists and the hippies.

Doctors wanted to have all of the psychotropics on schedule I available for study and treatment in controlled settings. They still want this for those same drugs, those that deal with trauma, alcoholism, cluster headaches, and end of life therapeutic issues.

What we have lived through is the equivalent of the Salem Witch Trials for those substances that were taken up by the counter culture in the 1960s. The 60s are over.

Except those who lost the culture war of the 60s are like guys with the rebel flag on the back of their car - except they're in high paying, influential positions in govt.

The Odd History Of Marijuana In The U.S.

ISAAC CAMPOS: Well, the I mean, it wasn't accidental, but it was pretty predictable. The prohibition of cannabis in California seems to have very little to do with actually the use of cannabis by people in California. It seems to have been almost an extension of the kind of reforms that were going on in the pharmaceutical business at that time. And really the kind of reforms that were going on with respect to vice of all kinds during the early 20th century. So there were a lot of new I believe it was in 1907 that California passed its first pharmaceutical restriction of the opiates and cocaine. And in 1913, the pharmacy board decided to add cannabis to that list. This does not appear to any concern about widespread use in California or anything like that. It was just based solely on the reputation of cannabis and the desire of the pharmacy board members to, I guess zealously continue their fight against the so called narcotic menace which was getting a lot of press in those days.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/oct/07/odd-history-marijuana-us/

When you could still pick up a bottle of cannabis tincture without a prescription from the local druggist, even into the 1920s in most states, those states on the border with Mexico, and states along the Gulf of Mexico were prohibiting "marihuana" - aka "loco weed" aka "killer weed."

Mexican laborers brought marijuana to the attention of white people. They were the people in the beet fields, etc. who used cannabis to ease their aches and pains from hard labor.

The use of cannabis for such reasons is part of the history of labor in the Americas - Africans brought "daga" to the Americas when they were kept in bondage - and they also used cannabis for relief of aches and pains under slavery, though there were religious reasons for some, too.

The docks in New Orleans brought cannabis from the west Indies, too, and from there, to the west and all points north, east, and south. Dock workers were part of that laboring class.

I think 20th c. prohibition has always been tied to groups the powerful have wanted to penalize.

When a newspaper in Chicago published a story in the late 1800s that said cannabis cured a child of consumption, the editor was taken to task as a degenerate. General signs and symptoms of consumption, or TB, include fever, chills, night sweats, loss of appetite, weight loss, and fatigue, so it's no big leap to see that cannabis might ameliorate some of the symptoms, without curing the disease - tho cannabis does have some anti-bacterial properties, according to some studies - but I think cannabis was treating the symptoms, not the disease, to be clear.

Mexicans came to the U.S. during and after their revolution. That revolution was also associated with "marihuana" - but not cannabis.

The propaganda against "marihuana" began as part of anti-immigrant sentiments. In this respect, it is no different than alcohol in the U.S. - which, beyond the saloons of the west, was associated with Irish, Italian and German immigration. Iow, even tho both cannabis and alcohol had histories among "wasps" that were the majority of the population, these two became problematic when "others" used them, too.

From Eric Schlosser's book, Reefer Madness:

The political upheaval in Mexico that culminated in the Revolution of 1910 led to a wave of Mexican immigration to states throughout the American Southwest. The prejudices and fears that greeted these peasant immigrants also extended to their traditional means of intoxication: smoking marijuana. Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a "lust for blood," and gave its users "superhuman strength." Rumors spread that Mexicans were distributing this "killer weed" to unsuspecting American schoolchildren. Sailors and West Indian immigrants brought the practice of smoking marijuana to port cities along the Gulf of Mexico. In New Orleans newspaper articles associated the drug with African-Americans, jazz musicians, prostitutes, and underworld whites. "The Marijuana Menace," as sketched by anti-drug campaigners, was personified by inferior races and social deviants.

El Paso was one of the first cities to make "marihuana" illegal.

And opium, for that matter, became a "concern" because of the Chinese workers who were building the rail system in the U.S. Not to say I'm dismissing problems from opium use. But even then if it was smoked it was opium. If it was a tincture, it was laudanum.

Then there were the "Hindoos" that became a target:

Within the last year we in California have been getting a large influx of Hindoos and they have in turn started quite a demand for cannabis indica," wrote Henry J. Finger, a powerful member of California's State Board of Pharmacy, in a 1911 letter (page 18). "They are a very undesirable lot and the habit is growing in California very fast; the fear is now that it is not being confined to the Hindoos alone but that they are initiating our whites into this habit.

This nation needs working people, yet it constantly reviles them.

... but never science.

But I tend to see that in the same light as I see our legislature approaching it here.

Its an attempt to keep control. They know they are losing this fight badly. 2 States have legalized recreational use, with more looking to follow suite. And that without even considering all the medical marijuana states. If they can drop its level, they can allow it, but still control it as a federally regulated substance, perhaps allowing them to bring all the states back into the fold and stop legalization from going viral.

I personally suspect its too little too late. If they had done it 5 years ago, we probably wouldn't have seen legalization in my lifetime. But the gate is open and people are flooding through.

Once it is lowered in classification, scientists will have legal access to cannabis, in order to study and document its medicinal value. Once science gets on this miracle drug, it is all over but the barking by the stupid people.

according to the provisions of the Controlled Substances Act.

The time has come for these agencies to repair their reputations.

To continue to place marijuana as a schedule I substance is to say you are untrustworthy as a regulatory entity because it is saying lies are more important than the truth.

There is NO DOUBT that cannabis has medical value. This has been shown repeatedly.

They just can't get away with their lies any longer and maintain the respect of any scientific or medical organization.

They tore the DEA Head up the last time she testified in front of Congress. She had nothing to counter what was being thrown at her but to repeatedly say it was addictive with no medicinal value, despite all of the evidence to the contrary that the Progressive politicians were throwing at her.

They need to preserve what little credibility they have left on this issue.

my respect for people in D.C. in positions of power has plummeted. When I read about the way cannabis was initially restricted, then made illegal, then the ways the govt. has sought to harm people just to uphold their irrational hatred...

This issue, if I wanted to get all touchy-feely about it - is about the way our nation turned, since WWII, to industry focused on raping the earth. A change of "heart" about the value of cannabis to all our societies, to me, is a metaphor for moving toward a human race that chooses to live as part of the biosphere, instead of as an antagonist to the earth.

Petrol products - all the bags, the fuel, insulation, and on and on - can be made from hemp. Cotton, which uses half of all pesticides in this nation - can be substituted with hemp.

Cannabis can be used for phytoremediation, which KY plans to do with its first hemp crop in 50 years, to draw toxins out of the soil.

Hemp paper is less acidic than wood pulp. Hemp paper is just all around a better product for any paper good. You should see the difference in paper made from hemp and that made from wood pulp - the quality of hemp paper to preserve itself is amazing compared to wood pulp.

A move to hemp paper would help stop deforestation.

Hemp seed is the best and most complete source of EFAs for humans, better than flax seed. Every part of the plant can be used in human activity, and was until the 1930s.

Hemp has an annual growing cycle. By moving to hemp, we could stop old growth forest destruction. Trees also serve to regulate the climate. Pine trees, for instance, emit terpenes that seed clouds above them to cool the earth. (Cannabis also creates terpenes, which is where the medicinal use comes from, often). We can help to restore some balance to the earth by moving toward biomass energy, in addition to solar, to reduce carbon emissions.

All this may sound out of place - but the reality is that hemp is also considered a schedule I substance, even tho it has no psychoactive qualities to speak of.

Whenever someone mentions all the positives about hemp, others will immediately say.. but it's not a panacea. Well, no. But replace all of those industries, above, with hemp industries and you will make a big dent in many of our problems related to manufacturing and the environment.

""

They would probably go for less years. Yes, it still sucks.

that the tipping point has been reached, and it's just a matter of how quickly things move.

Medical marijuana is on the ballot here in FL in the fall. I am not too sure of it's chances, but it is rapidly gaining support so if isn't this time it'll be next time. I wouldn't be too surprised if it passed, though I'm not getting my hopes up too much.

When Colorado and Washington legalized it and the earth didn't implode, I think the the anti pot lobby is being exposed and having no valid argument whatsoever.

I hate to use this analogy, but they are like a polar bear standing on a small piece of ice that is rapidly melting.

....Oh, but wait! The pope is against legalization! Maybe I better reconsider, lest Jesus cut my brake lines.