If cannabis gets rescheduled to III, how can it ever get the state - federal differences resolved when it comes to the recreational market?
The feds will still go after it as an illegal drug when presented as recreational and the will keep the stigma going on forever. Furthermore it will keep a lot of talented people out of good job opportunities for smoking a joint after work instead of having a glass of wine.
What blows my mind is how benzos are listed as schedule iv: low risk of abuse or dependence. Except that many, many people abuse and get hooked on them, and along with alcohol, the withdrawal can directly kill you.
Withdrawal can be lethal sure, but you can just overdose on them, like alcohol. They have a very simily mechanism of action to alcohol. It's also why they're so dangerous combined. The scheduling system has little relationship to medical reality.
Meanwhile if you smoke too much weed you'll have a panic attack, see God, fail asleep, and wake up with a terrible hangover. I've witnessed it a bunch (and experienced it myself) since the NY market is unregulated so dispensaries push 100mg+ edibles like it's a normal amount. Hell, I've seen drinks with 1250mg/8oz. It's wildly unpleasant, but way better than death.
Man, I fill with rage whenever I think about how much harm to the American public our "leadership" did with the War on Drugs just so they could have an excuse to be racist and classist
My wife was on benzos after a stint of panic attacks in the emergency room. That shit was fucking awful for her to get off of. Luckily she's extremely strong-willed. She went from 3 Xanax a day to none in a month. Her psychiatrist laid out a plan to get her off of them. She told her what time she should take each pill and at what doses. She actually went ahead of schedule. There were a few screaming fits from the withdrawal symptoms, but she did it. It took about 3 months for her to return to normal after her last pill. It was very difficult, but she did it.
Progress in government is made in steps. Scheduling to 3 allows research. Research that will show it's no worse than alcohol. Then we push for removal from the schedule.
Also, are there any studies supporting it being banned? As I understand it, it was a PR campaign and moral panic that lead to its ban on the first place, not anything rational.
The best way to remove it from the schedule is to dismantle prison slave labor. Financial incentives for imprisoning people will always lead here and are immoral. However, I offer a false solution, because I don't have a way to implement it.
It’ll get rescheduled when Big Pharma comes up with a potion that does a better job and that they can sell for $10k per dose. So long as cannabis works better than anything they can monetize, they’ll fight to keep it illegal. And they have very deep pockets.
The only reason cannabis is Schedule I is to "felonize" people who are more likely to vote against Republicans, so their right to vote can be taken away. Pharmceutical companies would frankly love for it to be descheduled, so they can research and develop it for prescription uses.
A better job at what, getting you high? Pretty sure they already have that, and while it doesn't net them 10k per dose the Sacklers would have liked that very much no doubt.
While true, an inch foreword is better than a mile backwards. And any movement whatsoever from the federal government is a sign that there are finally cracks forming in the dam.
The feds have already made it perfectly clear that they're not going to interfere with legal cannabis sales at the state level - even while it's Schedule I - as evidenced by ::gestures widely::. As long as there's no interstate transportation, rescheduling it isn't going to change anything.
Point is it's a stroke of a pen to change the priority... One president or one DEA switch away. The supreme court upheld Roe V Wade which was why it wasn't important to codify it into law... until it was.
The current state of affairs is the justification employers use for continuing to test and discipline folks for usage even in legal or medically legal states. It's also the justification banks use for not allowing dispensaries to use their services.
They don't legally need a justification. The reality is that drug tests just like felony checks are very good filters for bad employees. If a company actually needs employees they won't do them, or lower the standards so low that anyone that isn't actively injecting or murdering someone would pass.