In a noteworthy piece on Bloomberg Law written by Andrew Kline from Perkins Coie and Shane Pennington from Porter Wright, they highlight the potential benefits of reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III substance. The authors argue that such a change would facilitate the legal use of this plant for medical purposes and enable authorities to concentrate their resources on more harmful substances. Read more
This article is a response to a letter published last week by former drug policy adviser, Kevin Sabet, asserting that marijuana is “addictive”. Sabet also argues that reclassification to Schedule III would further normalize the cannabis industry and provide tax relief, to which Kline and Pennington respond, that the state-regulated cannabis industry is in fact what needs be further normalized in the interest of public health & safety, since such industries uphold standards for product testing, age verification, and packaging.
The accusations about marijuana being just as addictive as any other substance is misleading, as Kline and Pennington point out. For instance, studies have observed that three out of every ten coffee drinkers are addicted to caffeine, but we don’t see a call for the criminalization of coffee consumption. Furthermore, the argument presented in Sabet’s letter deals more with abuse potential rather than actual harm caused, with zero deaths attributed to marijuana use according to DEA data while neglecting the real tragedies such as the opioid addiction epidemic that claimed close to 100,000 lives last year.
According to a report that Kline and Pennington previously published, widespread acceptance of marijuana for medical use at the state-level means that it should be considered as having an accepted medical use in treatment in the US. These assertions have support from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The authors argue that instead of demonizing the state-regulated marijuana marketplace, efforts could be redirected to the illicit marijuana market and/or hemp-derived products, which currently lack the protections provided by state regulations, such as age verification, THC limits, and standardized packaging or labeling.