US Health Agency Recommends Marijuana for Rescheduling

23ABC News

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has delivered a recommendation to the Drug Enforcement Administration on marijuana policy, and Senate leaders hailed it Wednesday as a first step toward easing federal restrictions on the drug.

Transcript

00:00 You can already use legally used recreational marijuana in more than 20

00:05 states while 38 states have approved it for medicinal use. Despite those changes

00:09 pot though has remained illegal on the federal level but now the nation's top

00:12 health agency wants to ease some of those restrictions. Now the DEA

00:16 currently lists marijuana as a schedule one drug along with heroin, LSD and

00:20 ecstasy and currently marijuana is listed as having a higher potential for

00:24 abuse than cocaine, oxycodone and meth which are scheduled to. That is why the

00:29 Department of Health and Human Services wants to take pot down to a schedule

00:33 three which would put it on the same level as aspirin, cough syrup and

00:37 ketamine which you can get a prescription for. So what changes if pot

00:42 is reclassified? Well for starters schedule one is reserved for drugs again

00:46 like heroin with no currently accepted medical use. Those drugs are also way

00:50 more difficult to research for medical purposes and are often more aggressively

00:55 criminalized. Now if the DEA follows through with the change we would likely

00:58 see the booming cannabis market further expand. Additionally a certain tax

01:03 provision only applying to schedules one and two substances would no longer apply.

01:08 Now it's no secret that marijuana legalization has increasingly gained

01:12 bipartisan support over the years. This year several states as you see here have

01:16 seen legalization victories including in Georgia where if you have a medical

01:21 marijuana card you can now go into any dispensary and legally get oil and then

01:25 in Minnesota beginning August 1st it became legal there to possess, grow and

01:29 use certain amounts of pot for residents over the age of 21. And when it comes to

01:34 reclassifying marijuana the DEA will review the recommendation and then make

01:38 a decision. It's a process that could take months. Mara Sirianni, Scripps News.

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