If Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has time to read Mary Howitt’s little masterpiece, he should know that persistence pays off especially when the other party drops their guard. The medical marijuana impasse has gone on too long for many. Those in favor demand more material for research, while the law enforcement agency will not release its grip.
The legal way to loosen the logjam is to reclassify marijuana down from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic senators are calling for this to happen with increasing fervor. All eyes are on the DEA who promised a decision ‘in the first half of 2016’. It is another matter whether they will alter their position that the plant is among ‘the most dangerous class of substances’.
Were Warren and her supporters to succeed in a downgrade to Schedule 2, this might extend the sole right of the University of Mississippi to cultivate marijuana for research. The cliffhanger needs seeing in the context of the broader conversation. Perhaps Mr. Rosenberg will take opinion from the 58% of Americans who spoke for marijuana use to be legal late last year.
Talk in the corridors of power is this is unlikely, since a downgrade could be irreversible in the light of gentler pressure on cigarettes and alcohol. On the other side of the trenches, battle lines are evident too. The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics continue to extol medical marijuana, while even former US Attorney General Eric Holder said, “I certainly think it ought to be rescheduled.”
In our opinion, the conservatives will hold their ground. John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution points out this is a rerun of the DEA’s 2001 and 2006 decision that marijuana is more dangerous than cocaine, meth, oxycodone, and anabolic steroids which some would hold is an untenable position.
The decider may well be the cautious position taken by federal lobbies. Until our national legislators align with those who chose them, the pro-marihuana lobby is unlikely to drag the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. So for now, progress is more likely to be slow but steady as opposed to radical.
Let us not forget that Chuck Rosenberg told a US House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the DEA’s fiscal 2017 budget in November 2015, “We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don’t call it medicine – that is a joke.”