The impact of rescheduling marijuana?

Taking up Mark Kleiman’s argument that marijuana rescheduling would be meaningless, Jacob Sullum has this excellent piece on Forbes.com, in which he notes:

From the perspective of people who believe marijuana should be legalized for medical or general use, the advantages of [rescheduling] are not as substantial as you might think. But neither are they, as UCLA drug policy expert Mark Kleiman claims, “identically zero.” Moving marijuana to a less restrictive legal category would have some significant practical effects, perhaps the most important of which would be to advance a more honest discussion of marijuana’s hazards and benefits.

The whole thing is well worth reading.