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Federal Officials May Loosen Marijuana Resrictions
Posted by CN Staff on April 08, 2016 at 17:53:56 PT
By Jessica Firger 
Source: Newsweek
USA -- Officials from several federal regulatory agencies announced this week plans to re-evaluate policies that restrict the availability of marijuana for medical research. The agencies will make a drug scheduling decision as early as June. In response to requests from members of Congress, the agencies vowed to draw up plans that may eventually expand the number of growers able to cultivate cannabis for medical and research purposes.In the 25-page letter addressed to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of National Drug Control Policy and Drug Enforcement Administration provided information regarding the supply, scheduling and surveillance of the drug.
 The letter also includes a list of the cannabis strains currently available through the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s contract with the University of Mississippi and laid out detailed information on the protocols in place for researchers looking to obtain marijuana for studies.Yet Warren said the letter didn’t provide all the requested information, specifically how the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will facilitate and encourage research on marijuana. “I look forward to following up on those issues with the agencies and holding them to their deadline—'the first half of 2016'— for a scheduling decision," Warren said on Thursday in a press statement.In December, Warren and several other lawmakers sent a follow-up letter to request the agencies outline the plan. The request came after the group sent a similar letter in July.Currently, cannabis (both marijuana and its non-psychoactive cousin, hemp) is designated a Schedule I substance, a label that defines it as a drug with currently no acceptable medical use and a high potential for abuse. This severely limits its access for cultivation, except in 23 states that have passed laws that make it legal for certain purposes.The DEA manages licensing for scientists and clinicians who wish to obtain marijuana for research purposes. As of now, the agency has issued only a single license for the cultivation of marijuana for scientific research to the University of Mississippi. According to the response letter, the university currently has approximately 185 batches of marijuana that contain varying concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). But whether or not other institutions will be permitted to grow the plants for research remains to be seen. According to the letter, just one other researcher, Lyle Craker, a professor in the department of plant, soil and insect sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has ever applied for a research license to cultivate the plant.Many researchers have pointed out that the U.S.’s tight restrictions have vastly hindered the ability to conduct much-needed studies on the efficacy and benefits of marijuana for conditions such as chronic pain, epilepsy and cancer. According to the letter, there are currently 265 researchers in the U.S. who are registered with the DEA to conduct clinical, preclinical or analytical research on marijuana.In a statement, Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, praised the agencies’ response: "Rescheduling marijuana and allowing research into its potential medical benefits is plain old common sense and could bring us closer to scientific discoveries.”Source: Newsweek (US)Author: Jessica Firger Published: April 8, 2016Copyright: 2016 Newsweek, Inc.Contact: letters newsweek.comWebsite: http://www.newsweek.comURL: http://drugsense.org/url/7oZdBjHRCannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #7 posted by afterburner on April 16, 2016 at 15:02:35 PT
Deschedule. Reschedule Is Not Appropriate
DRUGS.This Is the Big Demand on Marijuana We Should Make of the Federal Govt.Rescheduling cannabis would be helpful in some respects, but does not go nearly far enough toward ending federal pot prohibition.By Paul Armentano / NORMLApril 12, 2016http://www.alternet.org/drugs/deschedule-not-reschedule-cannabis
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Comment #6 posted by Hope on April 13, 2016 at 19:47:12 PT
Observer comment 5
Amen to that!
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Comment #5 posted by observer on April 13, 2016 at 13:01:10 PT
The DEA Question
Cannabis is the main line of business for drug warriors like the government paycheck hirelings which staff the DEA. They know this, hence the Herculean obfuscational bureaucratic bull they spew. Their lying agenda is to keep their drag-nets full, to keep coming the tax-meat on their tables, to bring on the gravy train. DEA hirelings depend on it. Watch James L. Capra lay it on thick here in 2014 - complete with quivering voice and crocodile tears. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvibFaeLF8kDrug War Propaganda -- 
For the children, cry tear-stained experts and authorities, we must battle and war against drugs (meaning: jail more adults, longer). This shall save our children from the epidemic! ...
Above all, shouts the prohibition propagandist: because of the terrible wickedness inherent in "drugs," not to mention the demonic fiendishness of drug users, "drugs" must never be "legalized". (By "drugs" the propagandist means of course and especially "marijuana," and by "legalize" the propagandist means that jail must remain an unquestioned punishment for marijuana users, when police and prosecutor find it profitable.) Otherwise, quivers the prohibitionist, if we surrender in this "war," an epidemic of drug fiends would be unleashed upon the good people of the land.
(Drug War Propaganda 
http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/books/dwp_book_5x8.html )
My guess is that DEA gauleiters are desperately trying to do more of the same. Lie about pot, stall and red-tape any downgrading of pot from some arbitrary (propaganda) US drug "classification", claim other politically controlled lying false-front bureaucracies like NIDA, FDA, NIH, etc. are against it. Anything, anything to keep the pot arrests rolling along, to keep the seizures happening, to keep up a plausible rationale for the dysphoric nightmare of a police state the USA has become. That is what I predict the DEA will do. On the other hand, they (DEA hirelings from the top on down) should do something else. Instead of more of the same, in place of fathering ever more lies about pot, rather than killing, stealing, and destroying which the DEA is tasked to do, something else should happen.Each DEA employee should quit, resign, stop going to their place of work and get another job: immediately and now. That's what the people who implement the violence of the DEA, the employees of the DEA, should do. From the person who checks badges at the front door, to each DEA secretary, agent, administrator and gofer: resign. Now.If you work for the DEA, your "contribution" to the DEA hurts people, and makes violence where none would exist. DEA work is as immoral as working for SAVAK, GRU, NKVD, DINA, STASI, and yes, the Gestapo. Please stop. 
http://drugnewsbot.org
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Comment #4 posted by SoupHerb on April 11, 2016 at 05:50:02 PT:
Yes, Deschedule ASAP
The war on one of the most useful plants on earth if not the most useful should yes be absolutely de-scheduled most importantly because the schedule is of DRUGS.
Cannabis is a plant and that makes all authority on criminalization of a plant ridiculously filled with fraud, lies and greed...to hurt and control the poor and minorities no less!!!!
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Comment #3 posted by Hope on April 10, 2016 at 18:33:09 PT
De-schedule
I completely agree, my friend. I completely agree.Haven't we all had enough of the prohibitionists' reefer madness? I know I have. It's been an outrage and an obscenity for way too long now.
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on April 09, 2016 at 05:18:54 PT
De-schedule
Not re-schedule! 
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Comment #1 posted by The GCW on April 08, 2016 at 20:53:40 PT
Schedule I is unacceptable to the masses.
First, I want to note I don't believe the DEA is legally allowed to change the schedule. Am I wrong?Then, if it can, I'm more optimistic this time around. There is a lot more scrutiny. A lot more publicity, more knowledge, on and on. A lot more people not willing to accept Schedule I. A lot of complex issues will be solved by re-scheduling. -Banking, federal law, lawsuits, medicine availability, gun ownership for cannabis users, job protection, less discrimination against users, on and on.& the word is out. The President is not laughing anymore.***Of course, nobody is going to wait for the prohibitionists... full steam ahead.-States which are on track to get initiatives on on the ballot must not change any of those plans because of this news.
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