Hundreds of pages of recently released documents provided by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) affirm what the overwhelming majority of the public has known for decades:
Marijuana possesses therapeutic efficacy and its harms are not on par with those of heroin, or even alcohol.
Those were the explicit conclusions of the nation’s top federal health agency, along with the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) calling on the agency to remove “botanical cannabis” from its Schedule I prohibitive status in the federal Controlled Substances Act.
By definition, Schedule I substances are federally criminalized because they possess “no currently accepted medical use in the United States,” a “high potential for abuse” and “lack accepted safety under medical supervision.” Cannabis has remained classified as a Schedule I controlled substance since 1970.
HHS, which was tasked by the Biden administration in 2022 to review the federal designation of cannabis, based its conclusions, in part, upon the real-world experiences of over “30,000 health care practitioners authorized to recommend marijuana” under state law and the more than six million state-registered cannabis patients they serve.
The agency concluded: “No safety concerns were identified in our review that would indicate that the medical use of marijuana poses unacceptably high safety risks for the indications where there is some credible scientific evidence supporting its therapeutic use.”
Department officials added, “The risks to the public health posed by marijuana are low compared to other drugs of abuse,” such as benzodiazepines — a Schedule IV drug, or alcohol, which is unscheduled.
Of course, the public has long been aware of this reality. California first legalized medical marijuana nearly 30 years ago. Thirty-seven additional states have followed suit. Twenty-four states — encompassing 53 percent of the U.S. population — have legalized adult-use marijuana markets. Most of these statewide policy changes were enacted by voters at the ballot box. Seventy percent of Americans say that cannabis ought to be legal for those age 21 or older, and the majority agree that “alcohol is more harmful to a person’s health than marijuana.”
Nonetheless, the federal government and its bureaucratic agencies have steadfastly refused to budge on this issue for more than five decades. As recently as 2016, the DEA — which has the final say on cannabis’ federal drug designation — said that there exists no compelling reason to remove marijuana from its Schedule I prohibitive status.
Now, the ball is in the DEA’s court once again. But the question remains: Will the agency continue to cling to its long-held “flat Earth” position? Or will it finally take steps to move marijuana policy into the 21st century?
Time will tell, but regardless of the outcome, it is clear the American public has already decided.
This op-ed initially appeared in The Hill.
Additional information is available from the NORML Fact Sheet, “A Brief History of Cannabis Rescheduling Petitions in the United States” and in NORML’s op-ed, “Cannabis Must Be Removed from the Controlled Substances Act to Resolve State/Federal Conflicts.”
Just ahead of the crossover deadline for the 2024 legislative session, members of both chambers of the Virginia legislature approved competing measures to legalize and regulate the retail sale of cannabis to adults 21 and older.
Both bills initiate retail adult-use cannabis sales on January 1, 2025, Delegate Paul Krizek’s HB698 proposes a tax rate of nine percent in lieu of any state or local retail sales tax, whereas Senator Aaron Rouse’s SB448 imposes a 16 percent tax in addition to any state and local sales taxes.
NORML Development Director JM Pedini testified in support of both bills. Pedini suggesting amendments to SB448; specifically they asked lawmakers to remove criminal penalties for those who make cannabis products intended for personal use (like tinctures and baked goods) and for possessing lawful amounts in public.
Both marijuana retail sales bills now cross over to the opposite chamber. It is anticipated that members of each chamber will amend the other’s bill with a substitute of their own version before referring them to a final conference committee to reconcile their differences.
SEND A MESSAGE IN SUPPORT OF ADULT-USE RETAIL
“The real work will be done in conference committee, at which point conferees must decide if these are simply messaging bills, or if they intend to send Governor Youngkin something palatable enough for him to even consider not vetoing,” said NORML’s Pedini, who also serves as Virginia NORML Executive Director.
Earlier this year, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin told reporters “I just don’t have a lot of interest in pressing forward with marijuana legislation.”
Under state law, adults 21 and older may legally possess up to one ounce of marijuana in public and cultivate up to four plants per household for personal use. However, retail sales in Virginia are currently only permitted for qualified medical patients.
Virginia’s legalization law, enacted in 2021 at a time when Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Governorship, called for retail cannabis sales to begin no later than January 1, 2024. When Republicans gained control of the House and Governorship in 2022, no legislation establishing rules and regulations for state-licensed retailers succeeded and sales were not permitted to begin. Democrats now control both the House and the Senate, clearing a path for cannabis retail sales legislation to advance to the governor’s desk.
“Absent a legal marketplace, Virginia’s illicit market has since ballooned from $1.8 billion in 2021 to $2.4 billion in 2023,” added Pedini. “Unfortunately, consumers don’t know whether they’re getting a safe product or one contaminated with potentially dangerous adulterants. Unregulated marijuana isn’t lab tested for purity and it isn’t sold in packaging that is both childproof and not appealing to children,” they said. “Ultimately, Governor Youngkin will have to decide if he’s more interested in allowing unlicensed, unregulated operators to continue controlling cannabis in the Commonwealth or if he’s finally ready to extend the same commonsense provisions already used to regulate the legal sale medical cannabis in Virginia to adult-use retail.”
Additional legislation expanding employment protections for medical cannabis patients to include public employees, protecting parental rights, and improve the state’s medical cannabis program has also crossed over. Republican-introduced bills attempting to establish unscientific per se THC blood limits for motorists were never docketed for a hearing and are subsequently dead for this legislative session.
H/T: norml.org
