Marijuana Legalization Issues on Classifying
Schedule Classification and Pot's Effect on Society and Medicine
The US Drug Enforcement Administration states that "Marijuana is a Schedule 1 substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)." which went into effect October 27, 1970. Schedule 1 drugs are defined in section 812 of the CSA as:
"(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."
Debate Over the Schedule Classification of Marijuana
Michael Koger, Sr. from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. in his paper entitled "Medical Marijuana Revisted" stated, "The cannabinoids are the psychoactive chemicals in the hemp plant. Specifically, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has antiemetic, analgesic, antianxiety, sedative and appetite-stimulating properties (Kane, 2001; Watson, 2000). Identification of these chemicals occurred during the 1960s."
Mr. Koger discusses the medicinal value of marijuana in great detail in this paper and sites several other sources including the New England Journal of Medicine as links to studies done on the plant's medicinal benefits.
This being the case, many proponents of the legalization of marijuana state that its medicinal properties outweigh the risks of the drug and that at the very least, the drug is mis-classified in the controlled substance schedule and has been since 1970 when it was first classified as such. With this in mind they say that since it is mis-classified in the schedule, the entire issue of the drug's legality should be re-considered.
Even those doctors who would never and have never used the drug, such as Dr. Scott Haig from Columbia University state that there is really no evidence of any real harm coming from the use of marijuana. Dr. Haig stated in his article for Time Magazine dated November 30, 2006, "The chief dangers of marijuana, practically, seem to spring from only one of its features: it's illegal. People get beat up, shot up and locked up because of the great amount of money that rides on selling the stuff, stuff that would be about as expensive as lettuce if it weren't against the law."
Legalization Effects on Society
Many of the persons that want to keep it illegal are afraid that making it legal will encourage the use of the drug and will especially increase usage amongst young people.
In 1973, Oregon decriminalized marijuana. During the years of 1975 - 1980 the University of Michigan studied the effects of decriminalization on the use patterns of youth. This was the only U.S. federal study to ever compare use patterns between states that had decriminalized it and those that hadn't. They found that, "Decriminalization has had virtually no effect on either marijuana use or on related attitudes about marijuana use among young people." A similar study with similar results was released in 1998 by the Drug and Alcohol Council of South Australia.
Of course the accuracy of these studies could be argued since the stigma and fear of reprisal of using marijuana, even in decriminalized states still keeps some people from openly admitting use and therefore may skew some of the results.
Legislators have long steered away from legalizing marijuana because of the perceived effects of the drug on people in society and the lack of knowledge of whether it has beneficial or detrimental properties. The 1970's classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug was done so on the recommendation of then Assistant Secretary of Health, Roger O. Egeberg. He had recommended marijuana's temporary placement in Schedule I pending a report by the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse which was founded during the drafting of the Controlled Substances Act.
On March 22, 1972, the Commission's chairman, Raymond P. Shafer released the report entitled, "Marijuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding," which advised that the commission recommended a social policy regarding marijuana in that the public was not more than 50% in favor of legalizing the substance and there was ample amount of fear in the society to warrant government control of it, but that "The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior." This recommendation was dismissed and the drug has stayed on Schedule 1 ever since. In a Gallop pole report from October 2009, the surveyors concluded that U.S. Support of Legalizing Marijuana Reaches a New High.
Johnston, L.D, P.M. O'Malley, and J.G. Bachman. 'Marijuana decriminalization: The impact on youth 1975-1980.' Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper 13. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1981
Kane, B. "Medical Marijuana: The Continuing Story." Annals of Internal Medicine, 134, 1159-1162, 2001
Watson, S., Benson, J. Jr., & Joy, J. "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base", Archives of General Psychiatry, 57, 547-552, 2001
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