12 Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urged the DEA in a letter to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act altogether.
Senate Democrats are putting new pressure on the Biden administration to ease federal restrictions on marijuana in a new letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday as it considers rescheduling cannabis after it was federally classified more than five decades ago.
The Department of Health and Human Services formally recommended in August that the DEA move the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, or CSA, prompting a monthslong review, which continues.
The letter, from 12 senators led by Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and John Fetterman, D-Pa., and signed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., goes further.
“The case for removing marijuana from Schedule I is overwhelming. The DEA should do so by removing cannabis from the CSA altogether, rather than simply placing it in a lower schedule,” the senators wrote in the letter, first obtained by NBC News.
Just fucking legalize it federally already. Rake in the taxes, destroy the black market, and let’s be done with this.
Now now let’s not be too hasty - those private prisons aren’t going to fill themselves.
Seriously, it’s so fucking stupid we’re still arguing about this. The majority of people have been cool with weed for decades now.
The problem in a taxed legal market is that the black market can still undercut the legal market if the taxes are too great. If the taxes are kept low enough and the supply is kept high enough, then the black market can’t compete with the quality legal stuff.
The other issue is states that keep it illegal. Illegal states still have demand so black market growers working out of legal states can supply black markets in other states. There really is no answer to that other than mandated legalization, which isn’t a thing without a USSC ruling that illegal marijuana is unconstitutional, which would cause all sorts of other legal challenges to illegal substance laws.
Even in legal states a black market still operates at a smaller scale depending on how dispensaries handle IDs. If the dispensaries are required to scan IDs to verify authenticity, it logs the ID unless there is a law that requires that no record of the ID is kept. People may not be comfortable or willing to have their ID logged at a dispensary due to legal or professional concerns given the frequent government overreach/abuse, frequent data breeches, or the individual’s criminality.
Depending on what you or the government may consider a black market, that may include an adult selling another adult a few grams from their legally purchased stash just as it would include a guy growing and selling pounds without a license/permit/taxation. The “black market” is only “black” because the government doesn’t control it.
Federal legalization is a fantastic thing that should be done, but it would not destroy the criminal black market as much as one would hope.
The headline is a little disingenuous because Biden himself doesn’t actually have the power to make the DEA reschedule it. All he can do is tell them he wants them to. The Controlled Substances Act takes it out of the president’s hands. I realize that makes no sense since the DEA is in the executive branch, but welcome to American politics.
You’re telling me he can’t fire the DEA chief until he gets results. I call bull.
He would need to get another chief approved. This is not a rubber stamp Senate.
That’s a risk I’m willing to take.
There are such things as acting chiefs as well. I keep firing them until we got somebody favorable
Trump tried to do that to get an attorney general who would help him out. It did not go well.
What do you mean it didn’t turn out well? Seems like there were actually zero consequences. I love that Trump was allowed to use the awesome powers of the president to hurt people, but Biden’s not allowed to use them to help people. That’s where the line is, apparently.
It’s more akin to Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, where he kept ordering the next Attorney General successor to fire a special prosecutor until someone finally did it. This finally convinced Congress to get off their ass and start the impeachment process. Republicans then spent the next few decades building a system to make sure a Republican President would never have to face consequences like that again.
Right, that’s kind of my point. Presidents can do a whole lot to cover their own ass and do illegal activities, but they can’t do anything to help the people, such as decriminalizing marijuana.
It’s a gross double standard.
Seems like there were actually zero consequences.
Apart from the consequence of Trump being unable to stay in office after declaring the election a fraud. Which is why he kept firing them.
Are you implying that by doing something incredibly popular would cause electoral consequences for Biden? Because what you just listed was that Trump lost the election. He faced no fruitful systemic challenges to anything he did ever.
This is an issue from the past decade. I can’t wait for all these old politicians to die… Fuck our collective lives😒
Damn Biden. You courting me from 15 years ago?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The DEA should do so by removing cannabis from the CSA altogether, rather than simply placing it in a lower schedule,” the senators wrote in the letter, first obtained by NBC News.
Since 1971, cannabis has been under Schedule I, the highest classification of the CSA, along with drugs like heroin and LSD, which the government formally considers to have high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.
Even so, 40 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized some form of cannabis, for either recreational or medical use, leaving consumers and business owners to operate in a patchwork of changing laws across the country.
The DEA told lawmakers this month that despite the historic recommendation by the Department of Health and Human Services over the summer, it “has the final authority to schedule, reschedule, or deschedule a drug under the Controlled Substances Act” based on scientific and medical evaluation.
The White House had hoped to make a rescheduling announcement close to the one-year mark since President Joe Biden ordered the DEA to review HHS’ recommendation in October 2022 and to use it as a campaign issue at the ballot box in November, according to five sources with knowledge of the situation.
Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who both worked with Schumer to put forward a comprehensive marijuana reform proposal that would end federal prohibition and decriminalize cannabis, legislation that has not gained the necessary support across the aisle.
The original article contains 661 words, the summary contains 239 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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This is Biden’s whole schtick - promise a bunch of common sense reforms in order to get elected, then deliver on none of them. “Nothing will fundamentally change”, a promise made to the only constituents he gives a damn about, his donors, is all he delivers.
Paid family leave, universal federal background checks for gun purchases, meaningful student debt forgiveness, mj legalization, closing corporate tax loopholes, codifying roe, being a 1 term president…the list goes on for what he has 0 intention of ever doing.
Paid family leave, universal federal background checks for gun purchases, meaningful student debt forgiveness, mj legalization, closing corporate tax loopholes, codifying roe
All of which are blocked by conservatives in the House, Senate, or SCOTUS. That last one you listed simply didn’t happen (Biden has never stated he would be a 1 term president). Their intentions don’t mean a thing when we elect people specifically to stop them.
Biden did in fact say he’d be 1 term
Look, I know the Dems’ favorite way to do nothing is to complain that republicans will yell at them, or the senate parliamentarian won’t let them, or some other such nonsense. That’s where you need a strong leader to come in and utilize the bully pulpit properly. Biden should have politically beat the snot out of Manchin and Sinema for the first 2 years of his term, and forced them to comply or resign. He had 2 years to get them in line via immense political pressure, and we elected the Dems into a majority with a mandate to do just that.
Instead, Biden immediately dropped all notions of doing any meaningful change, and actually gave Manchin everything he wanted in the new Mountain Valley Pipeline, a disastrous development for the environment. It could easily be argued that Manchin was in fact president these past 4 years, because he’s clearly the one calling the shots. It’s pathetic.
