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IPFS News Link • Drugs and Medications

Marijuana a Schedule 1 Drug! Are you Kidding me?

• http://www.lewrockwell.com-Dom Armentano

Yet having said that, the U.S. has a long history of drug restriction begining with the Harrison Narcotics Act (1914) which regulated  many so-called "hard" drugs.  Interestingly marijuana was excluded from the law. At the state level, Massachusetts enacted the first statewide cannabis prohibition in 1911 followed by California in 1913. Prohibitions soon spread throughout New England and then to most of the country by the early 1930s. The general public hostility to marijuana use (nurtured by media hyperbole) climaxed with the passage of the federal Marijuana Tax Act in 1937.

The prohibitions against marijuana were expanded in 1970 when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) which classified cannabis as a "Schedule 1" drug (like heroin). Schedule 1 drugs, supposedly, are those with "no accepted medical use" have a "high potential for abuse" and lack any "safety" profile.

Ironically a provision in the CSA called for the creation of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (known as the Shafer Report) which concluded (1972) that marijuana use was not dangerous or harmful and should be decriminalized. That recommendation went nowhere. Indeed, the Congress did the exact opposite; they legislated the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 1973 and the so-called "War on Drugs" began with a vengeance under President Nixon.

Since the late 1970s, however, regulatory attitudes toward cannabis have shifted markedly. Despite the strict federal prohibition, various states have permitted (through legislation or constitutional amendment) the consumption of small amounts of marijuana for recreational and medical purposes. A recent tabulation finds that at least 23 states have some sort of a medical marijuana law (Florida's proposed constitutional amendment in 2014 on medical cannabis did not pass) while several others have either decriminalized pot use and/or "legalized" it (e.g., Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington).


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