It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who has lived in the United States since the Nixon administration that marijuana is federally banned. The kicker is, however, that many people still do not know how severe that ban is. But before we scrutinize the DEA, let’s consider how many states have legalized marijuana for use. As of 2018 these are the statistics ¹ ⁴⁵.

Recreational & medical use is legal in 9 states and 1 district: AK, CA, CO, OR, MA, ME, NV, VT, WA, & the District of Columbia Medical use is legal in 20 states (in addition to the above recreational states): AR, AZ, CT, DE, FL, HI, IL, OH, MD, MI, MT, MN, ND, NH, NJ, NM, NY, WV, RI, PA

> Notice that the primary location of the states that have not legalized any form of marijuana are those from the South (the Bible Belt) and Midwest. These are generally conservative and religious, aka Republican, states.

That’s 29 states where marijuana is recognized as a medical treatment, and 9 of those states let adults do whatever they want with it (so long as they’re not breaking other laws). Now, if we add up the population of these 29 states out of the 50 states there are, we can get an idea of how many Americans live with recreational & medical marijuana.

% of population living in a state with medical marijuana ²: 62.18%

Alright, so we won’t commit a logical fallacy and say all of the 62.18% of these people living in these states support medical marijuana, but here’s a funny coincidence: according to two independent polls, this is approximately the percentage of people in America that support marijuana legalization.

Gallup’s 10/2017 Poll ³: 64% were in favor of legalization Pew Research Center’s 10/2017 Poll ⁴: 61% were in favor of legalization.

So why did I go on a tirade about how many people currently live with marijuana in their state and how that relates to the percentage of people in favor of legalization? That’s elementary my dear Watson! The federal government has remained complacent with the DEA’s choice to ban marijuana as a schedule I substance, which goes against the wishes of the majority of Americans.

Before we continue, I’d like to acknowledge that there is a debate about who should have power in the United States — the people or those they choose as representatives. I don’t wish to do anything more than dip my toes into this subject as a necessity, but it goes something like this: the idea of having a representative choose what’s right for you, and the rest of the nation, is based on the representative being superior to you as a specialist in politics. As such, they should be more informed and intelligent when making the political decisions that govern your life. But if you've found your way here, then maybe you also care about being informed and intelligent enough to make up your own damn mind about how you should be able to live your life.

Hopefully I can inform you enough to help you make a good decision on marijuana’s scheduling status. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

Thomas Jefferson

Back to the DEA’s scheduling of marijuana. What are the qualifications for a substance to be labeled schedule I? According to the DEA website ⁵: “Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Clearly there must be a typo. No, wait — that’s what it actually says: “no currently accepted medical use”. So then how does approximately 62% of the nation live within a state (29 states — the majority of 50) that has recognized marijuana as a medically viable option? This is an irrefutable contradiction that disproves the DEA’s own criteria for scheduling: there is accepted medical use.

A proposed reason for why the DEA might not accept the states’ accepted medical uses is because the federal government has stricter standards for their studies. But if the DEA does not accept these states’ studies due to their own strict guidelines, why doesn’t the DEA take initiative to do their own studies and validate or deny the states’ claims? The DEA should not flat out deny the evidence, especially when there’s so much, and continue to enforce such tough policies that ruin people’s lives.

One of the problems with the DEA’s placing a drug under schedule I is how difficult it makes scientific studies that could otherwise refute the DEA’s own reasons for scheduling a drug. While marijuana has been extremely difficult to study here, other countries such as Israel have been and are currently pioneering marijuana research ⁶, and American marijuana companies are heading there for research. Let me repeat that: American companies have to do scientific research in Israel — the Middle East — because our laws are too strict even for drug research. First notice that American jobs are being shipped overseas, and then notice that America is falling behind in research, both because of the DEA’s drug restrictions.

In case you are wondering what the acceptable medical applications are, I refer you to the following website that breaks it down by state: https://www.leafly.com/news/health/qualifying-conditions-for-medical-marijuana-by-state , but here are a few medical uses with their attached scientific studies ⁷ ¹³:

> Note: Marijuana’s effectiveness in treating pain was accompanied by 63% of users reducing / eliminating the use of opioids — which is incredible when our current administration is struggling with what we call the opioid epidemic.

I can’t believe how easy it is to once again disprove, with scientific backing, the DEA’s claim that there are no accepted medical uses. Maybe the only part of “no currently accepted medical use” that the DEA really follows is the word “accepted”, because there are medical uses that both science and state governments accept. Here we see that the DEA’s reasoning is absurd because it can’t accept what science irrefutably shows: concrete correlations that point to the facts about drugs.

It should be noted here that the medical uses of marijuana can be overstated as well, and there is still a lot of research to be done. Regardless, it seems clear that there is at the least some accepted use, and there is certainly much potential for research.

Other drugs under schedule I also have medical uses that can’t be refuted by the DEA ¹⁴. Heroin is a schedule I drug, but it has acceptable medical use and is used medically by our ally, the United Kingdom, to treat severe pain. Why does the United States care more about banning a chemical than treating severe pain? Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and Denmark, prescribe heroin to heroin addicts who do not respond to other treatments.

Let’s look at the only other criteria for a substance to be labeled schedule I: it must have “a high potential for abuse”. We will again use science to debunk the DEA’s masterminds. According to the Scientific American ¹⁰: “The researchers found that of those who had tried marijuana at least once, about 9 percent eventually fit a diagnosis of cannabis dependence. The corresponding figure for alcohol was 15 percent; for cocaine, 17 percent; for heroin, 23 percent; and for nicotine, 32 percent.”

Alcohol is more addictive than marijuana, and probably worse for you — but it’s legal.

Wait, what? Marijuana is less addictive than two drugs — alcohol and tobacco — that are not even scheduled by the DEA? Indeed. In another corroborative scientific endeavor aimed at, as the study title declares, “Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse”, marijuana comes in as less harmful than alcohol and tobacco ¹². Forget about the tobacco, however, and think about alcohol. At the center of the debate on legalizing marijuana is the alcohol-marijuana debate: how can alcohol be legal and unscheduled if marijuana is less harmful and addictive, but is scheduled (and improperly scheduled at that)?

> Note: The alcohol-marijuana debate is a strong argument for the legalization of all drugs, but the reasoning for that is coming up.

From here we see more of the DEA’s inherent irrationality: they are selective about what drugs they schedule, and they do not solely base their classifications in a scientific manner — i.e., they are politically motivated in their drug restrictions. The reason for their not scheduling alcohol and tobacco seems to be because too many people use those drugs, not because they don’t have addictive properties or a high potential for abuse.

Congress in the Controlled Substances Act, Section 801, wrote ¹¹, “The illegal importation, manufacture, distribution, and possession and improper use of controlled substances have a substantial and detrimental effect on the health and general welfare of the American people”. But as seen above with alcohol and tobacco, the health and general welfare of the American people is second to what the people want. In other words, if the majority of people want to do drugs, the state has shown that they will allow them to do so. Say, wasn’t there around 62% of the nation that favored marijuana? Why isn’t the DEA using their established precedent?

> Note: The war on drugs makes innocent users suffer for wanting to enjoy themselves the way people do with legal drugs. One joke in America is that cops will throw you in prison and ruin your life if you take drugs, because drugs have the potential for ruining your life. The joke underlines the main problem with America’s drug policy: drug users need treatment, not jail time. Look at Portugal’s drug policy and what is happening over there (otherwise known as the Portugal Model) ⁴⁰ ⁴¹. Portugal has decriminalized all drugs since 2001 in favor of treating drug use as a medical issue. Their choice has resulted in a drop in drug use, a drop in HIV transmission through drug use ⁴², and they save money treating users instead of imprisoning them.

We’ve seen that “high potential for abuse” is arguable, but in comparison to the other drugs that are legal it’s clear that marijuana does not match either of the two criteria required for a schedule I substance. Referring directly to the Controlled Substances Act, Section 812, marijuana does not fit A, B, or C:

1) Schedule I. — A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Opioids like fentanyl kill people every year, but marijuana is more toughly scheduled.

Another common point that many people make is that marijuana is scheduled with drugs such as LSD, heroin, magic mushrooms, and MDMA, and is placed even higher than cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine (schedule II), and ketamine (schedule III). Instead of going more in depth with these comparisons, let’s go back to the alcohol-marijuana debate; because surely, if alcohol is legal then it isn’t as bad as the worst-of-the-worst under schedule I.

> Note: Global Drug Survey 2017 collects information on the percentage of people seeking emergency medical treatment on drugs, and it is another way people judge what drugs are the most harmful. Synthetic cannabis appears to be very dangerous, but cannabis is much safer than alcohol; this article is about cannabis only. The study also suggests magic mushrooms are the safest of all recreational drugs ²⁵.

To die by smoking marijuana is thought of as a near impossibility. As one study by the Australian government states, “Thus, the dose of THC which kills 50 per cent of animals (LD50) when administered intravenously is 40mg/kg in the rat but 130mg/kg in the dog and monkey (Rosencrantz, 1983)” ¹⁶. An article by drugabuse.com sums up how much marijuana this translates to in everyday terms ¹⁵: “It’s estimated that you would need to smoke 19 pounds of marijuana in 15 minutes to die from pot.” Contrast this with the CDC website’s statistics for how many people die from alcohol poisoning every year ¹⁷: 2,200. This does not count the vast number of deaths each year due to alcoholic liver disease or other alcohol induced deaths. In 2015 there were 21,028 deaths due to alcoholic liver disease ¹⁸, and the CDC states approximately 88,000 people die in total from excessive alcohol related deaths each year ²⁰.

The mortality rates corroborate the assessments that the effects of marijuana are less harmful than alcohol. Needless to say, there are other consequences for using THC and alcohol, but these consequences are hard to compare since they are inherently different. We can only compare like things such as cancer and memory loss.

THC is seen to have a 2–3 fold increase in risk for testicular cancers ²², but moderate alcohol consumption (at 3.5 drinks a day) increases the risk of certain head/neck cancers 2–3 fold more ²³. Alcohol also increases the risk of esophageal, liver, breast, and colorectal cancers — with breast (at 3 drinks a day) and colorectal (at 3.5 drinks a day) cancer risk increasing by 1.5 fold. No doubt as further research is done on marijuana we may discover more, but clearly the risk of cancer is significantly less with marijuana than with alcohol.

A study by JAMA Internal Medicine ²¹ shows, “Past exposure to marijuana is associated with worse verbal memory but does not appear to affect other domains of cognitive function.” The study is inconclusive on how marijuana affects other forms of memory in the long term. Alcohol, on the other hand, has benefits in lower doses ²⁴ and many more negative cognitive side effects with heavier use. In a study by Alcoholism: Clinical & Experiment Research, the results showed, “After controlling for other drug and strategy use, there was clear evidence that differential use of alcohol was associated with impairments in the long-term aspect of prospective memory and with an increased number of cognitive failures.”

Besides direct effects, many argue that society will be negatively impacted by violent crime or driving under the influence. While the effects of alcohol accounted for a 13.64 fold risk of getting into a fatal car accident, marijuana’s effects had a 1.83 factor ²⁶. The long term negative effects of alcohol abuse can also affect your motor skills for months after quitting ²⁷, but there has been no evidence of anything similar happening under marijuana.

There doesn't seem to be a link between marijuana and violence.

As for violent crime: alcohol was a factor in 19–37 % of violent crime from 1997 to 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice ²⁸. In the study, “Developmental associations between substance use and violence”, it was concluded that violence is not increased by marijuana ²⁹. Another study from the University of Buffalo suggests intimate partner violence is less likely among couples in which both spouses use marijuana ³⁰, and another by the University of Tennessee found no relationship between physical aggression and marijuana ³⁴, disproving an early, erroneous study that linked the two ³⁵ ⁴⁴.

We could keep comparing the effects, but that would be beyond the scope of this article. The point of these comparisons is to show that alcohol is easily identifiable as more dangerous than marijuana, even though it is unscheduled. Why, then, does the federal government not give people the right to choose whether they want to accept the negative consequences of marijuana as they do with alcohol? Especially in consideration to the fact that there is no evidence of violence that would impact society. By extension, why is it not this way for most, if not all, other drugs that do not perpetuate violence or health issues?

The DEA does not represent what the majority of Americans want, nor does it have an informed and intelligent basis for their classification system, since they don’t follow their own guidelines. So where would marijuana fit in their scheduling list? If alcohol isn't on the list, I don’t see any special reason why marijuana should be.

Don’t trust the government!

The problem comes back to trustees in government that are supposed to work on our behalf but don’t. The DEA did not ask Americans for permission to ban or control any substances after passing the Controlled Substances Act. Even worse, all of the power to decide what can be restricted is in the hands of the Attorney General — leaving banning drugs up to political bias and not scientific research. This is seen in our current system of government with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who represents the Republican party. Once in office, Jeff Sessions announced he would continue to enforce federal marijuana law despite state legalization, something the Obama administration (the Democratic party) ceased enforcing.

> Note: Because of Jeff Sessions’ stance on states’ rights, much of the debate surrounding his decision to enforce federal marijuana law focuses on his hypocrisy ⁸. He has argued for states’ rights over federal law as recently as 2014 to support his stance on gay marriage ⁹ ¹⁹, but now he supports federal marijuana law over states’ rights. Sessions is a flip-flopper and he’s either too big of an idiot, and/or liar, to be in office.

Lastly, consider the recent attempt by the DEA to temporarily ban the drug kratom as a schedule I substance ³¹. There was a big public response, and the DEA withdrew ³⁹ its decision to ban kratom until further research by the FDA could be done. It’s good the DEA admitted it would consider public outcry and the FDA’s research in attempting to ban kratom, but it’s alarming they had no basis for initially declaring the ban was “necessary to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety” ³⁶. What has popped up since their withdrawal is the FDA’s classification of kratom, through computer modeling, as an opioid to back up the DEA’s decision. Some doubt that decision, such as Derek Lowe’s branding it computational instead of pharmacological, and arguing the results are not as reliable as the FDA claims ⁴³. The FDA’s new classification does not change the fact that kratom is what many people are taking to stay off of the dangerous opioids; whether it’s an actual opioid itself may depend on more data.

More than 42,000 opioid deaths happened in 2016 37 — but the supposed 44 deaths cited as evidence by the FDA that kratom is dangerous are highly debated as misinterpreted causes and skewed data ³⁸. Two studies, one from The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association and another from Pinney Associates ³² ³³, suggest there’s little evidence kratom causes death, and that it “appears to be relatively benign”. As with marijuana, there is little research to back up the DEA’s decision to schedule kratom, and it establishes the possibility for a pattern of incompetence. The time for U.S. Citizens to demand change from the Controlled Substances Act and the Drug Enforcement Agency is now.