An FDA report, which the government tried to cover up, has just attested to what everyone has known for decades. Marijuana has a variety of valuable medical uses. Yet because it is not quite legal, it is not federally approved for medical purposes except under stringent restrictions, and it is still classified in federal law as a Schedule I drug, a category for drugs with no medical uses and a high potential for abuse.
But the FDA, in a report released Jan. 12, found that marijuana does have important medical uses and that abuses are “less common and less harmful” than with other abused drugs. The Department of Health and Human Services proposed that it be revised to Schedule III, with other prescription drugs. However, the Drug Enforcement Administration is still stuck in the Reefer Madness era, when marijuana was viewed as a highly dangerous “gateway drug.” The DEA has opposed reclassification.
That’s why the August report was kept secret until now. It took a Freedom of Information request to pry it loose. It remains to be seen how the White House will reconcile the views of the DEA and FDA. President Biden recently issued blanket pardons for violations of federal and D.C. law for simple possession and use of marijuana. Practically nobody goes to jail for using or selling small amounts of pot nowadays, but marijuana is still in limbo—legal under the laws of 38 states but illegal under federal law.
Back in the day, when my tribe was working to expand civil rights, promote unionized labor, and end the Vietnam War, a young lawyer named Keith Stroup founded an organization called NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Several decades later, Stroup has won, sort of.
Meanwhile, our efforts on civil rights have been substantially reversed. The United States is no longer in Vietnam, except ironically as a trading partner with the communist regime that won the war. But the US keeps getting entangled in other police-the-world mishaps. Billionaires rule, as never before. And cannabis is commercialized.
At the time, I was sympathetic to NORML’s efforts, though it wasn’t a personal priority. Marijuana was less hazardous than alcohol, but millions of people were either in jail or risking arrest for possessing or selling small amounts. (According to the ACLU, there were 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010.) Yet compared to other more important causes, I couldn’t imagine dedicating my life to pot legalization, as Stroup has done.
Today’s quasi-legal marijuana is not quite what NORML hoped for. And the news lately has been filled with contradictory reports about marijuana.
The FDA finally supports legalization. But precisely because marijuana still exists in a legal limbo, nobody certifies the potency of the weed that is widely available in the pot shops in states where recreational use is legal, which have sprouted, well, like weeds. And this, unfortunately, lends credence to the Reefer Madness view.
The commercial-scale marijuana that is grown for sale today is many times more powerful than the street weed of my youth. As the THC content of cannabis has steadily increased and it has been ever easier to get, there are reputable reports of marijuana triggering psychotic episodes.
Meanwhile, weed has become just one more product for a capitalist system to exploit. More and more local pot shops are owned by large-scale entrepreneurs, and several cannabis companies are listed on stock exchanges. And like with practically every industry in our system, companies have consolidated into ever-bigger conglomerates. However, unlike alcohol, nobody certifies what’s in the stuff.
This isn’t quite the world that the hippie promoters of decriminalization were imagining.
Stroup and NORML are still at it. I sent Stroup an email to ask what he thought of the far-from-perfect reform that has ensued. I did not hear back.
Let’s face it: In libertarian America, causes that resist government interfering with our private lives—pot legalization, reproductive rights, the freedom to love or marry who we want—are pushing on an open door. Causes that require social spending or limits on capitalist excess are far more arduous to win.
The ’60s were one part social justice and one part sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Guess which one took over the larger culture?
Indeed, other progressive demands for local control, such as the school reform movement of that era, have now been captured by libertarian capitalists, as in the promotion of school vouchers.
When it comes to marijuana, what we have now is the worst of both worlds: unregulated weed being taken over by capitalists, while medical uses are still stymied. So let’s do it right. Make recreational and medical use of marijuana fully legal, and have the FDA certify potency and license sale. And then, could we please move on to more urgent causes?
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect (prospect.org) and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. Like him on facebook.com/RobertKuttner and/or follow him at twitter.com/rkuttner.
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2024
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