Terrific series of commentary on marijuana policy, politics and practicalities

Last week, the Washington Post’s In Theory section focused on federal drug scheduling laws, with a particular focus on marijuana.  The terrific collection of commentaries from a diverse array of experts was set up via this into piece headlined “Is it time to revise our federal drug laws?”, which started this way:

In a letter this month to inquiring lawmakers, the Drug Enforcement Administration quietly announced that it will decide whether to change the federal status of marijuana “in the first half of 2016.”  The move excited legalization advocates and reminded everyone else of how convoluted our drug regulatory process can be.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970 while facing backlash against the recreational drug use of the 1960s, the federal government categorizes drugs based on their medical value and potential for abuse.  If substances have no potential for abuse, they aren’t controlled at all.  If they do, they’re classified in one of five schedules of decreasing severity.

Drugs in Schedule I are deemed as having “no current accepted medical use” and a high potential for abuse — the category where marijuana resides, alongside heroin, LSD, ecstasy and others. These drugs are regulated with extreme stringency in terms of access, research and supply.  Schedule II drugs — such as morphine, fentanyl and methadone — are seen as having a high potential for abuse but some medical value.  Schedules III-V contain drugs of medical value and decreasing potential for abuse. Each schedule is regulated with correspondingly less strictness.

Critics of the system (or at least of certain drugs’ positions on the schedule) point out that this creates a circular problem.  Drugs are placed in Schedule I under the presumption that they have no accepted medical use. Yet the strict regulations of that schedule make it difficult to conduct the scientific and medical research that could uncover such drugs’ medical potential, making it all but impossible to move them to a different schedule.  Cannabis, for instance, has shown potential therapeutic value for ailments including chronic pain and epilepsy, but only one place in the United States (a University of Mississippi farm) is allowed to grow marijuana under federal regulations.  A number of Schedule I psychedelic compounds have similarly shown promise in treating mental health conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but it’s difficult to set up the sort of large-scale studies needed to meet the government’s standards for use.

In addition, many schedule placements seem arbitrary at best and deliberately skewed at worst. Alcohol and tobacco aren’t in any schedule at all, despite their proven susceptibility for abuse.  Schedule I serves as a catchall for drugs of barely comparable levels of danger and potential benefit, many of which have been stigmatized through racist or classist propaganda.  Meanwhile, other mostly recreational drugs like cocaine are in placed in more lax schedules on the basis of quite limited medical use.

Here are the commentaries that followed in the series, all of which are valuable reads:

• Keith Humphreys, professor and health policy expert at the Stanford School of Medicine, “The paradox at the heart of our marijuana laws — and how to fix it“

• Erwin Chemerinsky, law professor at University of California, Irvine, ““Why legalizing marijuana will be much harder than you think“

• John Hudak, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, “How racism and bias criminalized marijuana“

• Bill Piper, senior director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, “There’s something missing from our drug laws: Science“

• David Courtwright, author and professor at University of North Florida, “Scientists want to study marijuana. Big Pot just wants to sell it.”

• Bertha Madras, professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School, “5 reasons marijuana is not medicine“