Last week the US Drug Enforcement Administration broke the hearts of many who use marijuana recreationally but they may as well have backhanded not only those who use it medically, but those who have devoted their time and energy to the science that proves it to be beneficial and harmless.
On Thursday, the agency announced that marijuana would remain a Schedule 1 controlled substance, alongside drugs like heroin and LSD. The ruling also confirmed that marijuana is considered more harmful and potentially easier to abuse than drugs like oxycodone, morphine or codeine.
Despite the use of medical marijuana to alleviate chronic pain, slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease, soothe those who suffer from mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, control epileptic seizures and reduce symptoms of PTSD, the FDA continues to ride the break on the process of lessening its federal restrictions. Keeping marijuana on the Schedule 1 list keeps the doors to more research and science with the potential to prove its safety and impact on health nearly shut.
Our government deserves to be slammed for this one. Refusing to reclassify a substance with the potential to actually help people and not shackle them to their antidepressants or highly addictive narcotics for life is beyond moral comprehension. Perpetuating a failed drug war that incarcerates millions for the nonviolent offenses of selling, possessing or using marijuana, keeping the pharmaceutical industry in their pockets and refusing to break the American oil dependency are among the list of reasons for these profit-driven restrictions.
Although rescheduling marijuana wouldn't change its federal legal status, it would create opportunity for more science, portraying it for what is truly is, to emerge. But who would want that? Who would possibly want to see science with the potential to change the views of marijuana of millions of Americans? Science that could lead to prohibition being lifted? Science that could lead to a stimulated American economy swollen with new jobs? Science that could control our incarceration rate? Science that could end the drug war that we've already spent trillions of dollars on? Science that could pull the trigger on our foreign oil dependency and keep us out of the Middle East? Not the United States government. Not pharmaceutical giants. Not wealthy physicians. Not the oil industry. Why not? Money. Their profits will continue to soar so long as science remains on the back burner. As long as federal restrictions regarding marijuana remain the same, the government will keep its choke hold of the American society's dependence on narcotics and oil, they'll keep their friends and enemies in the Middle East and they'll continue to spend your tax dollars locking up millions for nonviolent "crimes."
