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A DEA JUDGE RULED THAT POT IS MEDICALLY BENEFICIAL

For two years starting in 1986, the Drug Enforcement Administration held historic hearings aimed at the possible rescheduling of marijuana, which was and still is laughably designated as a Schedule I drug, along with heroin, ecstasy, LSD, and mescaline.

According to federal law, a substance is put on Schedule I — the most stringent level of control — if it “has a high potential for abuse,” “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” and there exists “a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.” Since marijuana is a nontoxic, nonaddictive plant with a millennia-long history of health uses, it utterly fails to deserve a spot in Schedule I.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, parties can petition for rescheduling of any substance, and the DEA must formally consider the request. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law and thirteen individuals with various medical conditions went through the steps to move weed to the slightly less draconian Schedule II, where it would still be considered a generally evil, destructive substance but could be more widely used for medical purposes. It took three lawsuits and two direct court orders to force the DEA to hold hearings.

During the proceedings, patients and family members testified about pot's near-miraculous ability to take away the overwhelming nausea caused by chemotherapy, its deflating of the internal eye pressure that causes glaucoma, its merciful relief of chronic pain and itching, and the way it tames spasticity. The mother of a teenager who died of testicular cancer told how chemo would make him violently vomit and dry heave for days, but if he smoked chronic before and after therapy, he'd eat dinner with the family that very night. She said: “It was clear to us that marijuana was the safest, most benign drug he received during the course of his battle against cancer.”

Bunches of doctors — including oncologists, ophthalmologists, psychiatrists, and alternative health guru Andrew Weil, MD — testified on the benefits of Cannabis sativa. Cancer doctor Ivan Silverberg, MD, declared under oath: “It [using marijuana] has simply become a standard routine, accepted as part of the practice of Oncology.”

Seventy-two articles from medical journals were placed into the record. NORML entered into evidence a list of 33 states that passed statutes recognizing pot's medicinal value.

On the side of the DEA and other Drug Warriors, a number of heartless doctors repeated the prohibitionist mantras that pot is no more effective than synthetic THC (to which patients who've tried both unanimously say bullshit) and that there's not enough scientific evidence to support pot's efficacy (never mind the fact that its illegality makes it almost impossible to scientifically study).

In the end, the DEA's administrative judge ruled in favor of sanity and compassion: He decreed that marijuana should be moved to Schedule II, where it can be widely used under a doc's care. In his ruling, Judge Francis L. Young wrote:

Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care....

The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasoning, arbitrary and capricious for [the] DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefit of this substance in light of the evidence on record.

Such enlightened thinking could not be allowed to stand, of course. The head of the DEA simply rejected his own judge's ruling, and there the matter ended. Image