US health officials look to move marijuana to lower-risk drug category | Reuters
Category: News & Politics
Via: evilgenius • last year • 91 commentsBy: Sourasis Bose and Mrinalika Roy i (Reuters)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recommended easing restrictions on marijuana, a department spokesperson said on Wednesday, following a review request from the Biden Administration last year.
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ReutersAugust 30, 20237:11 PM UTCUpdated agoFILE PHOTO-Rachel Levine, nominated to be an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 24, 2021. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/Pool/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Aug 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recommended easing restrictions on marijuana, a department spokesperson said on Wednesday, following a review request from the Biden Administration last year.
Nearly 40 U.S. states have legalized marijuana use in some form, but it remains completely illegal in some states and at the federal level. Reclassifying marijuana as less harmful than drugs like heroin would be a first step toward wider legalization, a move backed by a majority of Americans.
The scheduling recommendation for marijuana was provided to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on Tuesday as part of President Biden's directive to HHS, the spokesperson said.
"As part of this process, HHS conducted a scientific and medical evaluation for consideration by DEA. DEA has the final authority to schedule or reschedule a drug under the Controlled Substances Act. DEA will now initiate its review," a DEA spokesperson said.
Marijuana is currently classified as a schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high …
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Well that kind of came out of nowhere... It's welcome news though.
weed was made a schedule 1 drug by nixon in may of '71. back then a lot of people thought it was a way to coerce those the administration thought were the main society trouble makers into joining the service. get busted for weed, go to prison or join the army...
and smoke even more weed
... and figure out a way to bring that thai stick back to the states. $0.05 per stick in thailand = $20 per stick in the US.
We got a hold of some that in college. We nicknamed it Jim Jones
compared to the south of the border $10 per bag shit we were used to back then, thai stick would cause temporary brain damage...
Thai stick was always a rip-off. Just not much there.
if you couldn't stand up after 1 bong, we thought it was worth it...
Have smoked pot my whole life since I was a teen. Am 68 now.
Recently stopped due to suffering from long covid.
Don't need to exacerbate an ongoing lack of balance.
Was a high-level martial artist back in the day.
This getting old shit is really pissing me off!
the hill, up the canyon, nederland.
Boulder at Tulagi. Nederland at the Pioneer. Ward was Misty.
So many memories from the Eastern slope.
And then there was Cripple Creek (long before the casinos)
I got a job washing dishes for the dude ranch at peaceful valley in '70 and found that the liquor store down the road at raymond was more concerned with making money than checking ID's. we drove to that store from north denver every week until one of us could grow a mustache and buy local.
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What the hell for?
No one really good reason.
Reclassifying marijuana as less harmful than drugs like heroin would be a first step toward wider legalization
Not to mention a step towards sanity. It’s long past time to end the Reefer Madness.
Mr G has a little poster in teh man cave about Reefer Madness. It makes me giggle every time I look at it
Lol. So do I.
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Do you have Clinton derangement syndrome?
Nobody here needs to inhale more than you.
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Doesn't it, in someway, depend on what the definition of is, is?
It give businesses in states that have legalized it access to banking at the very least.
Now that's important. Right now I don't know where those dispensaries keep their money
It's a cash only business.
I used a credit card at my local dispensary - went there for the first time a few weeks ago.
Guess you got lucky...................
Sure it wasn't a debit card??
I have no clue what you're going on about. They take cash and credit cards at this dispensary.
I had to show ID to prove I was 21.
Also, it's not a major credit card company.
What's your point?
What's the fucking difference?
That's a lot of cash. I'm sure they have safes
Actually, there is a difference but so what?
I'm not defending Jim, here, but a debit card takes money directly from your checking account. A credit card is issued by a bank for making purchases that you will pay later
It's a VISA check cashing card/debit card. I stand corrected.
I don't mean to be an ass and get so prickly with Jim and you're cool TG. But this dispensary does take credit cards and cash - the credit card I tried to use was declined and I forget why but it's also been declined before (again, I forget why).
I don't mean to go on and on about it but I hate to be wrong goddamnit!!!!!!!!!!!!
And some places have guys with guns and only allow a certain number of people inside at one time. It's better than the beginning, but if the DEA does approve a schedule drop it will be much, much better.
Then the dispensary is using an illegal 3rd party to complete the transaction and can be shut down if the feds wanted to get pissy about it.
I have my fan club, too, so it's all cool.
I don;t like being wrong, either
Probably because it was a dispensary and it got declined for that reason. Why your other misfortunate time could be any one of a hundred reasons I guess. I will bow out now.
Hardly a part of a fan club.................
It is cute that some people here think they have fan clubs when in reality they are only people that call out their bullshit.
they have the newer double and triple verification safes on site, but most of the day's cash gets moved out regularly, and not by armored cars. it's another stealth type business that resulted from the weed biz. in colorado there's always people packing heat in a dispensary, it's the law. when trump started making noise about reversing weed legalization, the bipartisan state legislature made it illegal for state LE to assist them. the state does cooperate by forwarding intelligence to the feds about illegal grow operations.
credit cards aren't accepted for weed sales because the big banks fear being ensnared in a RICO situation for transfering money across state lines if anything goes sideways with the feds, but every dispensary I've ever been inside has a cash machine that take debit and credit cards. fortunately, legalized weed in colorado is amendment 64 of the state constitution. the banking laws were also changed in colorado by a bipartisan legislature to accommodate handling weed money, to keep the recreational retailers, and hemp farmers and ranchers in eastern colorado out of reach of the feds.
My oldest grandson in Oregon works in a dispensary. I'll have to ask him about that.😏
thanks for that info. the one time I bought weed in CO, I used cash
your in-law's neighborhood is surrounded by dispensaries. I switched to vape pens years ago because they're easier to hide in plain sight from prying eyes.
My BIL is flying in next week to celebrate Mr G's birthday. Maybe he'll bring me something
my contacts in the PD tell me there's no drug dogs at the denver airport and there hasn't been for years, they only have explosive detecting dogs. TSA and DHS only have time to scan checked baggage for explosives. I'm lazy, I disassemble my vape pens and disguise them in my laptop bag for carry on.
Just had to have the last fucking word now didn't you.
Now I remember/know why I get so prickly
That was not the reason for that credit card decline despite what you and evilgenius said
So do I. You explained it quite well in another comment.............and here it is
And unless you called the credit card company, you can't possibly know why it was rejected.
You may now have the last and final word on the subject.
I was wrong this once.
Now you may have the last word.
Proceed
I just hate it when I'm wrong and then double down on it. They take debit and cash, not credit.
Sorry for the snark evil genius.
That's not why, being wrong I mean, but I bet you knew that and just had to have the last word!
Now I'm going to smoke some weed and mellow out
you gotta try one of those vape pens. I spend $32 for a 1 gram cartridge and it lasts over 2 months. no wasted weed burning away in the pipe or joint. I spend in a year what I used to spend in a month 50 years ago, and that's not even adjusting for inflation.
A friend gave me one about a year ago. I'm still working it
... and no burning weed smell.
I gotta check that out. I'll research it before I make my next trip.
I am one of those very rare people that happens to be allergic to weed. If I am in close proximity to someone smoking it I get hives and have gone into respiratory distress. Growing up in the 60's and early 70's was real interesting for me. My friends could not believe I was allergic to it until they saw me carted to the ER in a ambulance!
my connection would take checks, seriously
I've known him for a long time though and we were friends
Just like hookers?
Damn Tess, I'd have to breath on a mirror to prove I was still alive!
Don't hookers that take PayPal and Venmo now? LOL!
Just checked with my grandson in Oregon and they do in fact require cold hard cash only at his place of employment. They also have a locked vault to store the stock of merchandise. He said there was another dispensary in the town that accepted credit/debit cards, but they folded and closed.
But cannabis does have medical use. It's good for pain relief, sleeping disorders, nausea in cancer and HIV patients, and helps with anxiety. Heroin has a medical use when it's labeled as morphine. I hear they're doing studies with LSD to see if works with patients with PTSD. If it helps, that could be a god send to veterans
Changing it on the schedule lets labs do real research on it so we can read the data and know what the truth is. If it really does have medicinal use then they can also find ways to use it effectively.
There is a lot of testing going on with multiple types of similar drugs - LSD, mushrooms, Ketamine and others on a verity of mental health issues. I've been hearing some very positive results.
The reason I say it has medical use because Arkansas legalized medical marijuana. Surprised? Yeah, me, too. But you should have seen how fast those dispensaries went up when they got the go ahead (took 2 years for all the legal wrangling and bullshit, but it got done)
Keeping MJ as a schedule 1 drug places serious hurdles in front of labs. See this article from 2016 -
I would like to see more research on it.
I'll volunteer to be a lab rat.
Me too!
I don't see how you can abuse pot. I mean you can only get so high no matter how much you smoke. It's not like you can overdose on it. I don't see it as a gateway drug either, leading to harder drugs, etc.
I can only partake so much and then I'm looking for my bed. I like to keep it low level. I read better when I'm slightly stoned
OD'ing on weed is also known as falling asleep.
I OD just about every night.
meh, I only use it to put me to sleep and keep me from shooting at republicans now... /s
there's a shitload of stealth big pharma research facilities in the tech corridor between denver and boulder. the ideal situation for growers here is to get connected to them because they pay premium prices for the yield. it has put a whole new meaning to "buying the farm" in this state.
I recently suffered a sinus infection. It’s hard not to be continuously consumed with that kind of pain since it radiates through your damn face. A couple puffs and I’m forgetting about the pain ricocheting from my throat to my eye socket, and instead thinking about whatever random memory pops into my head, or what to make for dinner, or why grass is green, or all of the above at once.
I once got stoned in college and had a ton of homework to do. French and calculus were way easier to understand under the influence
Ewwwe, not me. I’ve always hated school. Weed was the reward for finishing that shit. Pretty sure I have a touch of undiagnosed dyslexia too so that didn’t help.
Have been using it that way since I was 14.
It helps with all different sorts of pain.
I have been prescribed for Tincture of Opium for the last 2 1/2 years to slow down my gut. Tastes terrible but is the only medication that has worked on my symptom.
I was prescribed Marinol (dronabinol) which contains a synthetic form of THC- to improve my appetite and reduce nausea while being treated for cancer. I looked forward to the little buzz.
Morning...lucky for me I had no side effects from chemo or radiation ....made me wonder if it worked but apparently it did..😁
I’m very happy for you, it can be a trial by fire.
Not wrong..saw the effects on other people though, especially little kids..
My heart broke for them and anyone else going through the treatments having such a crappy time...
Stay tough Drinker you have an Aussie barracking (supporting) you from across the miles..
Thanks shona, as do you. The little kids are always the hardest, it’s one thing when a 68 year old man starts the treatment and something entirely different when some child does.
I am 63 and know what is going on and what to expect..
They don't understand what is happening to them..all they know is they just want to go home and be with their family...
It's about time.
I saw on last night's news marijuana stocks skyrocketed after the announcement.
I'm sure that they did, and just might continue to go up.
If the DEA changes the designation it allows big names to get funding and into the game.