Rescheduling marijuana

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Pot policy.

The Drug Enforcement Administration separates drugs into five categories with different restrictions. Schedule I is reserved for the most dangerous substances like heroin, ecstasy, and LSD. It also includes marijuana.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Some groups say the DEA should downgrade marijuana to a less controlled category. They think it’s time for the federal government to loosen up. Their reasoning? A majority of states allow marijuana for medicinal purposes. Almost half allow users to smoke it recreationally.

BROWN: But others warn that less restrictive policies could be devastating.

WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has our story.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Far too many lives have been upended because of a failed approach to marijuana. And I'm committed to righting those wrongs. You have my word on it.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Under President Joe Biden, the Drug Enforcement Administration proposed reclassifying marijuana, moving it from Schedule I to Schedule III. That would have put marijuana alongside substances like ketamine and testosterone. The rule wasn’t finalized, but the Trump administration is now considering it.

DONALD TRUMP: And we’ll make a determination over the next, I would say over the next few weeks.

Some are concerned about what kind of message this sends. Tom Reynolds is the president of His Way, a residential addiction recovery program based in Huntsville, Alabama.

TOM REYNOLDS: When you reschedule it, you kind of create the impression that it's not as harmful. And I think it's a false impression.

Reynolds has witnessed where marijuana use can easily lead.

REYNOLDS: I have sat through well over a thousand testimonies of guys in our program and every one of them start with alcohol and marijuana.

Still, some experts say that marijuana doesn’t belong in a category with hard drugs. By definition, Schedule I drugs have no accepted medical use.

KENT VRANA: I would say that as a scientist, it doesn't belong there because it does have known medical benefits.

Kent Vrana is a professor of pharmacology at Pennsylvania State University.

VRANA: We have four compounds derived from cannabis that are approved by the FDA.

Those prescription drugs are used to treat symptoms like nausea and seizures. Vrana believes marijuana may have the potential to treat a lot more, but there just aren’t enough clinical trials. Bringing marijuana down to Schedule III could help with that.

Vrana directs Penn State’s Center for Cannabis and Natural Product Pharmaceutics. He says his work is complicated because marijuana is currently listed in Schedule I.

VRANA: In order to do that research, I had to get a Schedule 1 license from the federal government. And that involved an awful lot of work, probably nine months involving the DEA and examination of my facilities. And having received that license, I can only get cannabis and cannabinoids by federal government approved sources.

The red tape makes it tricky to study marijuana’s benefits, and its harms.

VRANA: What really bothers me is people are using things out on the street that I don't have access to for my research. So I can't fully gauge the dangers of some of this very high concentration material that's out there.

But others think that marijuana’s harms are well-known enough to rule out rescheduling. Schedule I drugs are defined as drugs that can easily be abused. Heritage Foundation senior fellow Paul Larkin says marijuana definitely checks that box.

PAUL LARKIN: In the 1960s, the concentration of THC which is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, was between 3 and 6%. Nowadays, the concentration in the botanical form, the raw form of cannabis, is 30 to 40%. And processed versions of cannabis can be in the 90+ percent.

Larkin explains that the federal government has never approved marijuana in its plant form for medical use. At the state level, doctors can recommend dried cannabis, but they can’t prescribe it. In Larkin’s opinion, the federal government won’t ever be able to recommend dried cannabis for medicinal use.

LARKIN: One of the criteria for a drug to be approved as safe, effective, and uniformly made is that a physician will be able to know by prescribing it exactly how much of that drug a person gets.

That’s important because cannabis in all of its forms is up for rescheduling. So, while cannabis compounds have some medicinal benefits, smokeable weed hasn’t proven to be safe. Especially among young people, marijuana may impair brain development and has even been linked to greater risk of schizophrenia.

Most Americans might not experience the immediate ramifications of rescheduling cannabis. But businesses selling the drug would feel the changes pretty quickly.

Currently, marijuana businesses can’t receive federal income tax deductions for most of their expenses because marijuana belongs to Schedule I. Those companies could get more than $2 billion in tax relief every year if the DEA reschedules marijuana. Here’s Baker Institute for Public Policy fellow Katharine Harris:

KATHARINE HARRIS: And so my concern is that their businesses should be able to take that tax deduction like anyone else. On the other hand, that gives them more money to spend on things like marketing.

That could influence everyday users.

HARRIS: There's a lot of evidence from the alcohol and the tobacco industries that, you know, marketing is very effective if you market things, especially to youth, to make things look cool and fun and, you know, just a good time that increases use.

Rescheduling is not inevitable. For one thing, the House Appropriations Committee advanced a bill earlier this month that would prevent the Department of Justice from using federal funds to reschedule cannabis.

But if the federal government does reschedule marijuana, it may lead to greater instances of addiction, both to cannabis…and to harder drugs. And that concerns recovery program leaders like Tom Reynolds.

REYNOLDS: I don't think making more dangerous drugs legalized in our culture is going to help us battle the battle that we fight every day of addiction. There's over a hundred thousand Americans dying every year to drug addiction overdose. I've tried to point out to people that that's equivalent to having a 767 crash every day in terms of the number of young people that's lives are being lost over 300 every day.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown. Reporting by Bekah McCallum. 

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