Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 96 posts

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#31

Post by kstrauser »

bpodgursky wrote: post #9

I think it's OK say that Marijuana should be legal but acknowledge that the concrete proven medical benefits attributed to it are pretty marginal.

My take is that marijuana's medical benefits are small, but greater than alcohol's. I can't think of a single metric by which marijuana is worse for a person than alcohol, so if we allow alcohol, there's no reason we shouldn't also allow marijuana.

Even more: there's basically zero medical benefit to tobacco, and if there are 1 or 2 areas where it's slightly beneficial, there are a thousand where it's vastly worse. If tobacco isn't a schedule 1 drug, there's no way in hell marijuana should be.

I don't use marijuana and have no personal stake in this. If it were federally legalized today, my own personal life wouldn't change a bit. I just think it's ridiculous that we're clutching pearls about whether marijuana is good for you when other things that are objectively much worse for you are perfectly legal.

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#32

Post by eigengrau5150 »

You know, if we legalize cannabis we'll have to legalize driving while black next. How will we legally enslave black people by convicting them of crimes and forcing them to engage in prison labor without laws we can selectively enforce against them?

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#33

Post by jjcon »

roflc0ptic wrote: post #25
lambdaba wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find (or know) that the THC is contributing to this effect on top of the CBD?

not saying you're claiming otherwise, but both THC and CBD are derived from marijuana! edit: this comment is wrong.

Cbd is generally derived from hemp (which is legal federally in the us) not marijuana

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#35

Post by Cycl0ps »

hbrav wrote: post #28
cheeseomlit wrote: post #23

I'm curious as to why did they needed to amend the constitution to ban alcohol, but they didn't need to amend it for the war on drugs

If I understand correctly, the answer is "they probably did need to, but didn't bother". You'll sometimes see articles say "these states have legalized marijuana, but it remains illegal at the federal level". If the DEA did choose to try and enforce marijuana prohibition in one of these states, the state would be able to sue, making the argument that the US constitution does not give this power to the federal governm…

DEA raiding dispensaries has been a thing since CA first legalized marijuana. I'm not local but it looks like it was ruled in federal court that the DEA isn't authorized to raid a business operating within state law. Not sure how this effects things regarding amendments, but thought it was worth sharing

https://time.com/4080110/dea-medical-marijuana-california-ru...

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#36

Post by tro7ghor4 »

mountainriver wrote: post #11

Marijuana as schedule 1 is one of the dumbest things we have ever done. The fact that it remains in the modern era speaks to how incompetent the US has become.

Not sure I'd call it "incompetent". Maybe something more like diabolical? Overt government disinformation, giving federal "authorities" the right to raid and plunder any person or organization involved in harboring plant material.

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#37

Post by Accujack »

mountainriver wrote: post #11

Marijuana as schedule 1 is one of the dumbest things we have ever done. The fact that it remains in the modern era speaks to how incompetent the US has become.

>The fact that it remains in the modern era speaks to how incompetent the US has become

More racist than incompetent. The Nixon era war on weed was driven by hatred of blacks.

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#38

Post by _moof »

hbrav wrote: post #28
cheeseomlit wrote: post #23

I'm curious as to why did they needed to amend the constitution to ban alcohol, but they didn't need to amend it for the war on drugs

If I understand correctly, the answer is "they probably did need to, but didn't bother". You'll sometimes see articles say "these states have legalized marijuana, but it remains illegal at the federal level". If the DEA did choose to try and enforce marijuana prohibition in one of these states, the state would be able to sue, making the argument that the US constitution does not give this power to the federal governm…

The US Supreme Court found in 2005 that the federal government is within its rights to criminalize the growing of marijuana for personal use via the commerce clause:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

As for why an amendment was needed in 1920 but not 1971, apparently the commerce clause didn't become the anything clause until after 1937.

If this all sounds hopelessly inconsistent and/or hypocritical, well, I would agree with you.

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#39

Post by ben7799 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #9

I think it's OK say that Marijuana should be legal but acknowledge that the concrete proven medical benefits attributed to it are pretty marginal.

My take too. It has not followed anywhere near a normal process for a medically safe/effective drug to be approved. I'm for it being completely legalized but the medical aspect is very weird.

The DEA has not helped this at all but MJ is basically legal at the state level(s) because activists successfully argued against the war on drugs and via political will. Not because MJ treatments have been proven scientifically safe & effective.

The thing I am most skeptical of is the safety of delivering the drug via smoking raw Marijuana. This is completely off the reservation compared to most medical drugs.

Activists swear that it's safe to inhale MJ smoke into your lungs and you won't get cancer but it's extremely hard for me to believe with a straight face. Almost any type of smoke you inhale into your lungs has very bad side effects over time. We can make it legal but then we might discover it does increase lung cancer rates like tobacco once you daily smoke for 30 years. It's possible no one has really been able to smoke it at that level due to it being so criminalized.

I agree this doesn't matter for a terminal cancer patient cause they are dying but so much of medical MJ has seemed like a political foot in the door to get it legalized for recreational use.

Re: DEA Still Insists Marijuana Has No ‘Accepted Medical Use'

#40

Post by the_only_law »

I knew a guy who assumed that if marijuana would be legalized, the streets would be consumed by masses constantly walking and driving around stoned.

Props to him though, for at least having some level of consistency. The same person also admitted to me he was strongly against alcohol and wish prohibition had succeeded.

Post reply on HN