Last Updated 9/1/23
CANNABIS
Despite legal medical use in 37 states, marijuana is still considered a Schedule I drug under Federal law along with heroin, LSD, Ecstasy and more. However, on August 29th, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it would recommend moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the federal Controlled Substances Act at the behest of the Biden Administration. In Biden's 2022 Order, Biden explicitly said that “no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana.” On the surface, moving marijuana’s designation down to Schedule III is an exciting first step to decriminalization—the only movement we have seen in 70 years. It would essentially mean that the federal government acknowledges marijuana has some medical uses and, therefore, is expected to expand funding and medical research for cannabis. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t change the fact that it would still be federally illegal and a change in scheduling won’t allow doctors to prescribe it to patients. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would need to approve it as a drug and, according to Nathan, a Schedule III designation is unlikely to encourage the agency to do so. We are a long way off from significant progress.
Last Updated 9/21/23
Recommendation to Reschedule Marijuana
from Schedule I to Schedule III
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has sent its findings on marijuana to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to possibly alter marijuana’s status in the U.S.
Map taken from MJBiz on 9/9/23
Cannabis and Racial Equity
Much of U.S. drug policy was intentionally constructed to harm marginalized communities and, more specifically, to target the Black community. We are in desperate need of wide-reaching and all-encompassing restorative justice to even begin to make amends for the harm our country’s drug policies have imposed on minority communities. We, of course, must continue to call for the federal decriminalization of marijuana. But true restorative justice will require state-level pardons and a comprehensive seal/expungement program that would serve to remove (expunge) and/or conceal (seal) eligible criminal convictions such as simple possession of marijuana without imposing the financial burden of the application, court/filing costs or attorney’s fees—all of which vary considerably by state and even county. Some experts also recommend sunsetting laws to remove old criminal convictions after a certain amount of time has passed. Last but certainly not least, we must call for entrepreneurial and employment training and assistance for disproportionately impacted communities with pathways to minority and majority stake ownership in cannabis businesses.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
-John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon (1994)
