More than with perhaps any other major issue of recent years, the federal government and the states have inhabited two starkly different realities regarding marijuana.
Almost half the states, including Missouri and Illinois, officially accept recreational use of marijuana as a matter of personal choice for adults, akin to alcohol or tobacco, while fully three-quarters of states formally recognize pot’s medicinal value.
Federal law, meanwhile, has, until now, still regarded weed as the societal scourge that was condemned, with unintentional hilarity, in the 1930s cult-classic anti-drug propaganda film “Reefer Madness.”
President Donald Trump, in a rare instance of picking up and running with something his predecessor started, signed an executive order recently to reclassify marijuana under a federal drug-scheduling system that had equated it (ridiculously) with LSD and heroin.
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Trump’s order opens up medical research opportunities involving marijuana nationally, which is all to the good. It doesn’t constitute federal legalization of recreational pot. That will mean continuing the current, deeply silly situation in which 24 states bless an industry that the feds still officially, if passively, categorize as illegal.
But, hey, it’s a start.
I have spent my career caring for patients with chronic pain, dementia and other conditions that drain the quality of people's lives and the resources of our health care system. Too often, I’ve prescribed medications that are costly and dangerous, carrying high risks of dependency and death.
It’s not our purpose here to promote marijuana use, but merely to acknowledge a reality: Most of modern society has moved past the historic cultural hysteria regarding cannabis — a hysteria that was never scientifically supported. As long as cigarettes and alcohol remain legal, there’s no consistency in outlawing a substance that has never been shown to be as addictive or as potentially deadly.
Yet the federal government has long categorized marijuana as a Schedule I drug, its most stringent tier of controlled substances. Drugs under that classification — including heroin, LSD, ecstasy, quaaludes and mescaline — are deemed to be addictive and dangerous with no medical value. They are, in essence, completely illegal in the view of the federal government.
For comparison, drugs such as opioids, amphetamines and even cocaine are under the less-stringent Schedule II, meaning they have accepted medical benefits and can be prescribed to patients in specific circumstances.
Trump’s executive order reclassifies marijuana to the even-less-stringent Schedule III. That puts it alongside drugs such as ketamine, steroids and codeine, which are deemed to have legitimate medical uses and only moderate addictive qualities. Crucially, it will allow more widespread medical research involving marijuana and will open some tax benefits for the businesses that produce it.
That’s certainly an improvement over the current situation. It might also have the happy side-effect of further eroding lingering stigma regarding pot and eventually pave the way for full federal legalization for recreational purposes in the future.
Why is that important? It’s the wrong question. A more apt one is, what is the rationale for continuing to outlaw pot at the federal level in the first place?
Yes, just as society might well be better off if no one drank alcohol, a society without marijuana might well be a better one. But The lessons of Prohibition are clear: Absent a compelling and reasonable case for restrictions, declaring something contraband doesn’t end a given behavior as much as it drives it underground, unregulated and untaxed, while fostering contempt for the law.
Unless and until the federal government fully legalizes it, state-sanctioned recreational weed businesses and customers will continue to face burdensome and unnecessary hurdles, including banking restrictions and prohibitions on selling across state lines.
Just as some jurisdictions today still restrict alcohol, states that want to continue outlawing pot should always be free to do so. But The feds should get their noses out of the issue. Until then, we welcome this baby-step toward reefer sanity.
