Biden HHS urges that marijuana be reclassified as legal drug
WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services is recommending that marijuana be reranked as a less dangerous and legal Schedule III drug after President Bideওn ordered a review last year.
Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine issued the recommendation in an Aug. 29 letter to Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram, repo🅺rted Wednesday.
“DEA has the final authority to schedule or reschedule a drug under the Controlled Substances Act. DEA will now initiate its review,” a DEA rep said in to the publication Marijuana Moment.
Marijuana has been a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substanc꧃es Act since the 1970s, making it a federal crime to possess it for any reason outside limited research — though most states now allow recreational or medical use of marijuana with the acquiescence of federal pro𝐆secutors.
Schedule I drugs are deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no acceptedꦇ medical value. The mos💛t-restrictive category includes heroin and LSD.
Schedule III substances, by contrast, a🍎re considered to pose moderate or low risk of abuse and dependence. These includ༺e ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone.
The reform could clear the way for state-legal cannabis businesses to gain easier access to banking services by reassuring 🦩jittery financial institutions.
The rescheduling move also could also allow scientists to more easily research and doctors to more conventionally prescribe the drug. Physicians currently “recommend” marijuana in states where it’s allowed.
Biden asked for a re-evaluation of pot’s status this past October — weeks ahead of the midterm elections — and paired the request with a mass pardon of people convicted federally of si♚mple marijuana possession.
The president’s mass-pardon was denounced as a stunt by cannabis activists and federal prisoners who note𝓀d that all of the estimated 2,700 federal pot inmates are believed to be behind bars for selling rather than merely possessing pot.
Angry marijuana advocates rallied outside the gates of the White House at the time and played on a loop Biden’s 2019 debate-stage pledge to free everyone in prison for mari🐲juana, which they said he failed to fulfill.
Biden, 80, wrote some of the nation’s harshest federal drug laws in the 1980s and ’90s and says he still opposes marijuana legalization, despite for the reform in national polling, in favor of more modest decriminalization measures.
Since 2012, 23 states, three US territories and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana possession under local🐽 law. Nearly all states now allow tಌhe drug or derived compounds for medical use.
HHS and the DEA did not immediately re✤spond to The Post’s requests for comment.
