Historic Cannabis Law Changes Announced

President Joe Biden has asked for a review of marijuana regulations in an effort to boost his reelection campaign, and it is now expected that the Substance Enforcement Administration (DEA) will officially categorize the substance as “less restricted.”

The Controlled Substances Act would reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III on a federal level. This move, citing studies on its “therapeutic characteristics,” may lead to the replacement of fragmented state restrictions with lawful prescriptions.

According to a CBS News report, recreational marijuana use is already legal in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Montana, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.

However, prominent proponents of legalizing marijuana criticized the decision as a temporary fix, pointing out that substances like codeine, cough medicine, and ketamine remain illegal and carry penalties for both users and sellers.

The national organization Students for a Sensible Drug Policy declared, “Moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.” “Let me be clear: Schedule III does not equate to decriminalization or legalization. It will not put an end to arrests, particularly of minors.

For more than 50 years, the government categorized marijuana, heroin, and LSD as Schedule I narcotics, meaning that they had a high potential for misuse and no known medicinal usefulness.

Nonetheless, strict controls still apply to substances listed in Schedules II and III.

During his tenure as a senator in the 1980s and 1990s, Biden authored many of the nation’s most stringent federal drug laws. Biden continues to argue against the federal legalization of marijuana, even though 24 states, three U.S. territories, and Washington, D.C., allow recreational use of the drug in violation of federal prohibition.

Most people think that nationwide legalization of cannabis will happen eventually because of the strong popular support for the notion—70% of participants in a November Gallup survey agreed with the idea.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is sponsoring a federal cannabis legalization bill, despite his hilarious demand that the FDA look into the caffeine content of Logan Paul’s PRIME energy drink in 2023. However, opposition from other legislators makes it unlikely that the legalizing measure will pass very soon.

According to The Post, some 2,700 individuals are still serving jail sentences for cannabis offenses.

Furthermore, Biden’s 1994 criminal statute incarcerated two of the seven marijuana offenders who had their life sentences commuted on the final day of Trump’s administration in 2021. Among other convicts, paraplegic Michael Pelletier, 65, and Corvain Cooper, 41, had their jail terms revoked by Trump.