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A 2012 raid of an Oregon medical marijuana dispensary.

(Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian )

Vicodin and other painkillers will be a little harder to get in Oregon, once new federal regulations take effect as early as next year. That federal change is reasonable, given the mounting evidence of personal risks, costly hospitalizations and unintended overdoses related to narcotic painkillers.

Yet the feds’ action raises the inevitable question about pot: If the federal government can respond to evidence and adapt its approach in the face of new information on painkillers, why can’t it do the same for marijuana?

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Agenda 2013

Fix PERS

Address Oregon's tax structure

Grow jobs and income

Improve educational funding and function

Build the bridge

Protect and expand personal freedom

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Congress should follow the advice of U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and many others who see federal drug policy as out of step with reality. It’s time to stop classifying marijuana as a dangerous street drug with no medical value – or at least to weigh the evidence with a less biased eye. The formal listing of marijuana as a “Schedule 1” drug, akin to heroin, defies common understanding of the drug’s risk and potential.

The Controlled Substances Act, passed by Congress in 1970 and tweaked several times since, places many drugs on a schedule based on three questions: Do they have a medical use? How addictive are they? What’s their potential for harm?

Schedule 1 drugs are considered highly addictive with no redeeming qualities and cannot be legally prescribed. Schedule 5 drugs are relatively low-risk medicines, such as cough syrup with a touch of codeine. The middle three rungs are occupied by a who’s who list of pharmacology: morphine, cocaine, Ritalin, OxyContin (Schedule 2); anabolic steroids, Vicodin (Schedule 3); Xanax, Ambien, Valium (Schedule 4).

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration recommended kicking Vicodin and its brethren up to Schedule 2. Under the new classification, patients could get only a three-month supply without a new prescription, and they or a proxy would have to take their own prescriptions to the pharmacy. The supply chain would be watched more carefully, too, making it harder for pill mills to operate unchecked. The Drug Enforcement Administration favors the move and is sure to approve the change.

The new rules will need careful monitoring to ensure that people with cancer and other long-term pain-management issues aren't unduly burdened. However, the change does seem justifiable by the nationwide boom in painkiller abuse and accidental overdoses. Oregon, for example, is a national leader in pain management, but it also has the nation's highest rate of recreational painkiller use. Its rates of accidental deaths and hospitalizations from painkillers have both quintupled over the past decade.

The people most at risk in Oregon are working-age adults in their 40s and early 50s, perhaps masking the pain of a bad back, a bad divorce or a general lack of wellness. Some new federal safeguards could supplement the state’s ongoing efforts in curbing painkiller misuse.

Likewise, a more rational federal stance toward marijuana would add some sanity to Oregon’s efforts to regulate marijuana for medical use.

Oregon voters approved the medical use of marijuana in 1998. The Oregon State Board of Pharmacy voted in 2010 to reclassify marijuana at the state level from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 2 drug – not to endorse marijuana, as the board stressed, but to follow state lawmakers’ direction and address a conflict within state law regarding the drug. This is a good example for Congress members and federal agency leaders to follow.

After all, you don’t have to be Willie Nelson to favor the rescheduling of marijuana to somewhere else in the controlled substances heap. You simply need to recognize when laws become indefensible.

Whether they allow powerful opiate painkillers to be passed out like Halloween candy.

Or require marijuana to be banished and condemned, like heroin.