Dear Hippies: Weed Is Still Illegal, Probably Not Medically Useful
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. ruled today in favor of the DEA’s decision to keep marijuana a Schedule I drug–a classification for substances that are highly addictive and have no widely accepted medical benefits.
“On the merits, the question before the court is not whether marijuana could have some medical benefits,” reads the court’s ruling in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. Rather, the court was tasked with deciding whether the DEA was following its own rules in refusing to initiate reschedule proceedings for marijuana.
What’s this mean? Well, anybody who hoped that a Barack Obama presidency might include some liberalization of drug laws so that poor ol’ harmless marijuana got a bit of a free pass is going to be sorely disappointed. Some states are loosening their laws, of course, but the feds under President Obama are determined to keep running the country like Reefer Madness was a documentary.
