“No one should go to jail for smoking weed,” the vice president said.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday called on the federal government to move “as quickly as possible” to change the way it officially classifies marijuana, saying that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”

“I cannot emphasize enough that they need to get to it as quickly as possible,” Harris said. “We need to have a resolution based on their findings and their assessment. This issue is stark when one considers the fact that on the schedule currently, marijuana is considered as dangerous as heroin ― as dangerous as heroin ― and more dangerous than fentanyl, which is absurd, not to mention patently unfair.”

Marijuana is currently listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the Drug Enforcement Administration. That classification designates it one of the most dangerous drugs possible, with no medicinal uses. Other substances in the same category include heroin, ecstasy and LSD. Marijuana advocates have been pushing for years for the federal government to either reschedule marijuana to a different category or deschedule it entirely.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    615·
    8 months ago

    Biden cannot de-schedule it.

    Odd. Chuck Schumer seems to think he can.

    At most, he could issue an executive order telling the DEA to stop pursuing marijuana charges.

    Then if he doesn’t hate the minority communities that the racist drug war was designed to disrupt, he should have done this on day 1.

    Even if he did, the next president could just undo that.

    We should never do anything because Republicans might undo it.

    There are only two ways weed can be de/rescheduled. First, is for congress to pass legislation doing so which then would need to be signed by the president. Congress is not going to do that. It’s been attempted multiple times and has never come anywhere near passing. They pretty much all died in committee.

    The second way is the way mandated by by the Controlled Substances Act. That laws states that, first, someone must file a petition with the attorney general, or the AG could initiate the process themselves. The AG then sends the request to HHS Secretary to start a scientific and medical evaluation of the request. HHS and FDA then conduct an assessment and sends a recommendation to the AG. Meanwhile, the AG/DEA conduct their own review of the request. Assuming everyone agrees, the AG then initiates the standard rule making process following the Administrative Procedures Act and the White House, after it’s own review and the change can be made.

    That process sounds like complete bullshit from top to bottom when compared with the process needed to sell weapons for the genocide all centrists love.