This Tuesday, a national coalition of medical marijuana advocates renewed their demand to the Drug Enforcement Administration to act on an eight-year-old petition to reschedule marijuana for medical use as the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee holds confirmation hearings for interim DEA administrator Michele Leonhart this Wednesday, November 17, 2010, reports PR Newswire from the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis.
The rescheduling petition offers a unique opportunity to narrow the ever widening gap between federal and state medical marijuana laws under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), to make it consistent with the now fifteen state medical marijuana policies, and that of its own Department of Justice.
The final decision on the rescheduling petition will be made by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and this has proven to be an issue worth ignoring by the agency. As acting head of DEA, Michelle Leonhart has had the petition on her desk for the last three years and has so far failed to respond. As the years pass by, the proof of the efficacy of marijuana as medicine only grows.
Leonhart has already shown where she stands on the issue of respecting state medical marijuana laws. When asked directly about marijuana this week as she addressed questions from members the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leonhart said: “I have seen what marijuana use has done to young people, I have seen the abuse, I have seen what it’s done to families. It’s bad,…If confirmed as administrator, we would continue to enforce the federal drug laws…. the social costs from drug abuse, especially from marijuana,…Legalizers say it will help the Mexican cartel situation; it won’t. It will allow states to balance budgets; it won’t. No one is looking [at] the social costs of legalizing drugs.”, reports the Daily Caller.
She has overseen dozens of federal raids on dispensaries, growers, and potency testing laboratories that are following state law — in direct violation of the Obama Administration’s own written policies. Please contact officials to voice concern over Obama’s nomination of Ms. Leonhart. You can do that here.
Medical debate over marijuana- especially smoked marijuana- is complex and often polarizing. Importantly, in November 2009, The American Medical Association reversed it’s 72 year old policy that marijuana has no medicinal benefits and urged that marijuana’s status and federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed (Schedule I is a drug of abuse with “no accepted medical use.” Heroin and ecstasy are also Schedule I).
The change of position by the largest physician-based group in the country was precipitated in part by a resolution adopted in June of 2008 by the Medical Student Section (MSS) of the AMA in support of the reclassification of marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance. The last AMA position, adopted 9 years ago, called for maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance, with no medical value. The latest AMA vote on the report took place in Houston, Texas during the organization’s annual Interim Meeting of the House of Delegates November 2009, reports Opposing Views.
“It’s been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that marijuana has both already-demonstrated and future-promising medical utility,” said Sunil Aggarwal, Ph.D., the medical student who spearheaded both the passage of the June 2008 resolution by the MSS and one of the CSAPH report’s designated expert reviewers. “The AMA has written an extensive, well-documented, evidence-based report that they are seeking to publish in a peer-reviewed journal that will help to educate the medical community about the scientific basis of botanical cannabis-based medicines.” Aggarwal is also on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the largest medical marijuana advocacy organization in the U.S.
The purpose of the AMA’s recommendation to review the scheduling of cannabis was “with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.” The AMA regard the state-by-state, patchwork systems that have been established for medical marijuana as “woefully inadequate” in providing the safeguards that would normally apply in the appropriate clinical use of psychoactive substances.
Personally, I think it’s “woefully inadequate” that only fifteen states have a compassionate use program in place, and I’m very glad I happen to live in one of them! In the Bay Area, when it comes to cannabis, I feel like we know what we’re doing; and medical cannabis advocates believe that most dispensaries sell a safe product. That being said, in California, where we are lucky to live, the cannabis industry is thinking about standardization as well- without federal permission or guidelines! Companies like Steep Hill and Sparc, have begun testing and analyzing cannabis strains for levels of CBD, THC and the presence of molds and other toxins. Where government and healthcare organizations have failed to establish a legal framework for cannabis testing, dispensaries and labs operating on the fringe of the law have stepped in and are creating, from scratch, ways to analyze the plant and find ways to ensure the safety of a product designated for medicinal use.
You can read the full findings and recommendations of the AMA here.
The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis includes the American Alliance for Medical Cannabis, Americans forSafe Access (ASA), California NORML, the Drug Policy Forum of Texas, High Times, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), New Mexicans for Compassionate Use, Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, and Patients Out of Time.