Bout damn time

  • @[email protected]
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    1268 months ago

    It was predictable that this would get delayed to an election year… but at least fucking finally!!!

    • @[email protected]
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      758 months ago

      Well, just look at lemmy users around anything Biden related. No matter what, you’ll get people only talking about Gaza, and disregard all of the other good his administration has done for the 3.5 years they have been working.

      This is why politicians wait for the popular, easy wins until its campaigning time. People have a short memory, and it’s always whatever the last big news story is that drives voters.

            • @[email protected]
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              18 months ago

              Supporting genocide and genocidal countries are or about the worst thing that one can do. It’s hard to do enough good to overcome that. I dare say it’s impossible. At least Hitler killed Hitler.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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      748 months ago
      • “Americans will always do the right thing - after exhausting all other options” - Winston Churchill
    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      This would have been a baby step 10 years ago if we’re being generous. California’s medical marijuana program has been a legal gray area since 1996. So what we can expect federal legalization in another 20 years at this rate? If biden touts this on the campaign trail as an accomplishment I’m going to lose my god damn mind.

      This is so long overdue it doesn’t deserve celebration, it deserves a “what took so long, this isnt even controversial”. If your partner/roommate has been telling you to do the dishes for 20 years and you finally wash some you don’t get to turn around and go “look at me, I did 20% of the dishes! aren’t I great!”

      • @[email protected]OP
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        398 months ago

        I mean, that’s a pretty slippery slope of logic you’re on. We should have addressed anthropogenic climate change in the 70s, but I’m not gonna poo-poo the progress we’ve made.

        I know it sucks that so many things change on a generational scale instead of a year scale, but I was also pretty damn happy about all that institutional inertia slowing down the hard-right turn we took during Trump’s 1st term.

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          Being happy with too little too late is exactly why climate change is going be as catastrophic as it will be so I really don’t get how that makes your case. If biden wanted to he could have pressured the dea to deschedule cannabis completely. He didn’t. The DNC hates to lose one of the carrots from their stick.

              • @[email protected]
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                18 months ago

                …it’s a time machine. By its very nature, it’s never too late to try or care, just as long as you’ve built the damn thing.

                Unless you were going for more of a monkey’s paw/butterfly effect sorta vibe, which, for all we know of how the actual impact and ramifications of time travel actually work (I.e. effectively nothing in terms of concrete data), could be how the universe squares the circle on causality-violating disruption via some heretofore unknown mechanic vibe… in which case, yeah, totally possible.

            • @[email protected]
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              108 months ago

              “I’m going to thank you for doing 1% of what you could and should have instead of demanding to know why you didn’t do more”

      • @[email protected]
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        378 months ago

        Well, if you want faster change, you should probably stop blaming the lack of progress on the people who are trying to make changes and start blaming the people who block the changes

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          That’s the problem, they’re not or barely trying. Descheduling cannabis was within reach of this administration, they chose not to.

          • @[email protected]
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            178 months ago

            It wasn’t within reach; republicans control the house; before midterms, the decisive vote in the senate was Manchin. Democrats introduce bills to legalize weed, but unless they get a big majority those are not passing, and a law from Congress is needed for legalization.

            This is the best you can expect until more progressives are voted in.

            • Schadrach
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              18 months ago

              It wasn’t within reach; republicans control the house; before midterms, the decisive vote in the senate was Manchin. Democrats introduce bills to legalize weed, but unless they get a big majority those are not passing, and a law from Congress is needed for legalization.

              This is the best you can expect until more progressives are voted in.

              Changing drug schedules, including removing a drug entirely from the schedules is a process that can be started by the DEA, HHS, public petition or Congress. Congress can just do it, while any of the others it involves DEA and HHS coordinating via the FDA and the DEA making the final call. IOW, literally the same process used to put pot on schedule III could have been used to deschedule pot entirely but they decided on schedule III instead.

              This wasn’t the act of the legislative branch, this was the act of agencies under the executive branch. Specifically the DEA and FDA which fall under DOJ and DHHS, respectively. Who in turn are headed by the Attorney General and Secretary of HHS, who are appointed by (and ultimately report to) the President.

              When people claim that Biden could legalize pot, they aren’t talking about something he has to negotiate with Congress and never have been - they’ve been talking about him ordering his direct appointees to push through the required bureaucratic process to do it themselves. And he eventually did, but only as a half measure.

      • @[email protected]
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        268 months ago

        Our federal government always moves slowly and almost always is decades behind popular opinion, that’s not news. What is news is that someone did something, and that person is Joe Biden. Even if it’s long overdue, and even if it could be better, he acted on the opportunity to make it happen and that deserves credit.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        Agreed, Trump almost managed a coup, loaded the Supreme Court, and would fire random officials every other week… Then the democrats pretend the position of the president is powerless.

        The establishment left are a joke.

        • @[email protected]
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          168 months ago

          Yeah, I’m really angry that the president didn’t “violate the law” to push through marijuana changes faster.

          What were you hoping to see them do that they didn’t?

          • @[email protected]
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            68 months ago

            Why are you acting like “appointing a DEA administrator that is pro-legalization” and “make public statements encouraging them to deschedule cannabis” are somehow unthinkable and totalitarian?

            • @[email protected]
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              58 months ago

              … Because that’s what they did? The question was what would you like them to do that they didn’t do.

              • @[email protected]
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                8 months ago

                Please give me 1 example of Biden encouraging his DEA to deschedule cannabis because I can’t find one and doubt it exists.

                *downvoting me won’t make that statement exist. 2022 Biden statement on marijuana reform Notable absence: “marijuana should not be on the CSA list of scheduled drugs”. Interesting inclusion: ‘LSD is a good example of what should be a schedule 1 drug’

                • @[email protected]
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                  88 months ago

                  It doesn’t make you sound more credible when you skip over the part of the order where he directs HHS to review classification, which is all the president can legally order, to instead focus on the other part that isn’t actually a federal order.

          • @[email protected]
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            68 months ago

            The heritage Foundation’s 2025 plan doesn’t just go away if Trump loses the election. The Republican party just sit on it, and sit on it, and sit on it, until they are elected again… And they will be elected again.

            So the establishment left needs to show some level of radical action to even “return” to centrist popularity.

            The President pulling rank on The DEA isn’t illegal, and would ensure a full term where the electoral process could be reviewed and further secured, and an a number of Supreme Court justices could be impeached under a stronger set of anti-corruption laws instituted by a democratic effort.

            Because sometimes corrective radicalism is called for and warranted… Like when someone almost does a coup.

            • @[email protected]
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              98 months ago

              The “pulling rank” the president is allowed to do, legally, is to order them to do a review of the scheduling. Which is what was done. Which finished, and now it’s being rescheduled.

              The president doesn’t actually have the authority to order the DEA to change the scheduling.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 months ago

            What, you mean experience and institutional knowledge are more important than undying loyalty and complacency with unilateral action?

        • @[email protected]
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          28 months ago

          Porn is legal and it is hard to find a payment processor that won’t gouge you.

          Puritan bullshit finds a way.

      • @[email protected]
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        78 months ago

        The biggest thing this does imo is unlock the ability for federal research dollars to study marijuana. There’s some other good thing sure that’ll pay dividends later on as steps towards more harm reduction, but getting off Schedule I IS a big step, if not a complete step to righting the wrongs of the war on (some) drugs.

      • @[email protected]
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        18 months ago

        That roommate analogy hit me right in the feels. Was just thinking yesterday if my roommate even decided to do the trash or any cleaning once soon, i wouldn’t even be happy bc it hasn’t been done in 3+ years and there’s much to make up for. But positive reinforcement and all right? It took long, but we should probably celebrate if it does happen to keep encouraging the process and stoke that flame. Firmly stating “good job so far, but the job’s not done yet.”

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      I’d argue the opposite in a lot of cases, but not all.

      I’m more excited about the medical portion of re-classifying.

      edit I thought you meant the effects not the effects, so I agree with you.

      • gregorum
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        88 months ago

        I think they meant wrt the federal government.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    Sounds like a half-assed fuck up, that’s still 6mo to 3y. For weed. still gonna go to jail, still get a record, still get your life ruined, still over fucking weed. The idea that jail is the appropriate punishment for drug addiction is utterly unjustifiable at this point, yet here we are, still pretending we’re something other than just wrong. Sunk cost fallacy I guess. Guess they felt they couldn’t just come out and do the right thing after having ruined tens(?) of thousands of lives for no reason

    • @[email protected]
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      198 months ago

      A prison sentence is a slave sentence, can’t give up that juicy juicy slave labor so easily.

      :(

    • @[email protected]
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      138 months ago

      Unfortunately Oregon just proved decriminalization needs a functioning healthcare system to support it.

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          They effectively did one without the other. From what I’ve been able to gather Oregon is actually one of the worst states for mental health and addiction care. Now of course they realized this and tried to appropriate money to deal with that. But they didn’t get enough and there was no lead time. They decriminalized before the new infrastructure was in place. So all of the aid groups and government health agencies that did exist were playing catch up the entire time. Imagine the crunch with the entire state emergency hiring counselors, trying to buy new buildings for safe use centers, and new inpatient centers; all at the same time.

          So the net effect was people watched a drug problem get worse (because COVID did that all over the world) with less tools to deal with it than before. Instead of what they wanted to see, which would have been different tools to deal with it. In the end shutting it down and going back to arrests and courts became an easy case for Conservatives.

          The lesson aid groups and governments should take away is not that decriminalization is bad. Just that they must have enough health infrastructure to deal with the problem because there’s a lot of people who would be in the prison system that are going to suddenly be in the health system. And a pandemic is a horrible time to make sweeping policy changes on anything but getting through the pandemic.

          • Liz
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            88 months ago

            I’m glad that you shared this, because it’s good to know the pitfalls when implementing changes in policy. I want a robust and easy access healthcare system anyway, but it’s good to know it’s a prerequisite for softening on drugs.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      738 months ago

      I don’t know about weed for that purpose… sometimes makes people more anxious. It’d be better if they just stopped forcing drugs on people period without the oversight of an actual doctor.

      • IzzyScissor
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        418 months ago

        Seriously. The recent story of just how many people have died from the cops ‘giving them something to calm them down’ is insane. If you’re not my doctor, you don’t get to dose me with anything.

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          And that number was just the cases voluntarily reported or with legal cases that the AP could find.

          Since we have literally zero reporting requirements at a federal level for police departments, it could be 10-100x as many deaths.

        • @[email protected]
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          98 months ago

          Cops job isn’t to protect you or I. It’s to protect the people who pay them and their interests. It’s just a government sanctioned gang and anyone who believes otherwise either isn’t paying attention or is one of the people who pay them.

          • @[email protected]
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            18 months ago

            No true Scotsman fallacy. You can’t actually make the argument, which is why you realize you have to go straight to a logical fallacy.

            • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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              48 months ago

              …are you responding to the wrong comment, or do you not know what the no true Scotsman fallacy is lol

              • @[email protected]
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                18 months ago

                Neither. No true Scotsman (in this case someone not paying the police) would miss that they are a sanctioned gang. I guess I should also point out that it was coupled with an ad hominem as well, accusing them possibly not paying attention.

                Pick your logic fallacy, I guess. Either way, they’ve made no actual argument and just preemptively attacked anyone who disagrees with them.

                • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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                  8 months ago

                  But there was no attack. There was no argument. Unless I’m completely mistaken, the thread was just a discussion of police in our society and you jumped in calling someone out and attempted to dismantle an argument that was never even made.

                  If we want to go with just pointing out fallacies for whatever reason, I guess I’ll go ahead and throw strawman out there?

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        Hold on, I think you’re right but the cops should carry around gummies and offer them to people. I can’t think of a better outreach program

      • Alien Nathan Edward
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        88 months ago

        YOU MOTHERFUCKERS WILL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE! THAT’S RIGHT, I’M GONNA FUCKIN’…Fuckin’…fuckin’…oh hey, you guys all right? What? On my head? Sure…what? Yeah I could probably use a lie down right now anyway.

  • @[email protected]
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    This is dumb. You’ve got thousands of recreational dispensaries all over the country. States are pretty much operating in violation of federal law already because the federal law is so out of touch. Maybe change the law to be more in line with what states are actually doing?

    Do we get to wait another 50 years before they make recreational marijuana legal?

    I don’t even smoke weed and I think this is dumb.

    • htrayl
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      138 months ago

      What you are suggesting is a legislative action. The nation needs to provide enough legislative power to happen.

  • htrayl
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    8 months ago

    This thread demonstrates the idealogical purism and lack of pragmatic political expectations from leftists and progressives. There is literally nothing the Biden admin can do that will ever be enough because it doesn’t match some rosy fucking dreamland that only lives in your heads. Descheduling is huge, and signals the end of 100 years of madness with cannabis laws. If you want more, then we need to have more legislative power to implement it.

    This is a fucking win, dumbasses.

    • TragicNotCute
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      38 months ago

      You know he’s gonna, right after he wrings out and drinks his nightly baby.

  • @[email protected]
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    328 months ago

    Imagine simping for this.

    An unelected bureaucrat in an agency gets to decide how illegal a plant is. And then, they decide it’s still dangerous, just not as dangerous as psilocybin, more along the lines of cocaine.

    Progress, whatever, you’re still under a boot.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      Like what are you trying to achieve with this comment? Everyone knows it should be descheduled entirely, but are acknowledging progress.

      Your comment just reeks of negativity in an already bleak situation.

      Edit acknowledging progress is not simping.

        • @[email protected]
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          168 months ago

          Way to simultaneously claim to be against anti-intellectualism and be willfully ignorant of how federal-level politics works

      • @[email protected]
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        68 months ago

        Just reminding people, don’t start cheering for the DEA, remember what they took from you. This isn’t them giving it back, this is them salvaging legitimacy. Demand justice, not concessions.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      Schedule 3 is like Tylenol with codine. They decided it was like Tylenol.

      But yes, I’m happy some bureaucrat is there defining safety standards. Sure they get some things wrong. But also, there’s no sawdust or chalk in bread anymore.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    Why do we even have a DEA? It’s like putting cops in charge of which medicine you should take. They aren’t the ones who should be making the calls here.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        associating crack with black people

        Crack did not exist in at that time. The CIA didn’t flood black communities with it until the 80s.

    • @[email protected]
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      28 months ago

      So that way disabled people know who’s boss

      Like seriously as someone unable to function without prescription stimulants that’s how it’s always felt

    • @[email protected]
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      18 months ago

      The Enforcement part

      You think doctors are going to be arresting addicts on the street? Then they are just cops

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        Why are we arresting addicts? If you want to arrest people for loitering or blocking the sidewalk, fine. But, arresting them for being an addict is asinine. How about we arrest people for having cancer while we are at it.

  • gregorum
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    8 months ago

    will this mean it can be prescribed in every state? By any doctors? Will it be able to covered by insurance? Medicaid/Medicare?

    • @[email protected]
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      From a medical marijuana perspective it wouldn’t change much for states where it is still illegal. It will make things easier for people who are prescribed it in states where it is legal, and hopefully for places that produce or sell marijuana that are currently locked out of banking and payment systems. This would also allow Medicare to at least consider covering it in those states, but they wouldn’t necessarily have to. Medicare coverage decisions are made by the center for Medicare and Medicaid services, we’ll have to see after this change goes through what they determine. They do also already cover FDA approved medications based on cannibinoid ingredients like marinol or epidiolex which are pharmaceutical preparations of delta 9 thc and cannibidiol respectively (these are already available in every state since they are fda approved). Private insurance also will make their own determinations about whether they will cover it or not, but with this change there is a chance they could, whereas before there was no possible way. Medicaid coverage is mostly determined by each individual state.

      The only way this would over ride state law and allow medical marijuana into a state that doesn’t have legal marijuana would be if somehow the marijuana plant itself got an FDA approval, but that is very unlikely for a lot of reasons, foremost that the marijuana plant has a large mix of many different drugs with many differences in amounts and ratios of those drugs from strain to strain, plant to plant, different parts of the plant, or even the same plant at different times in its life. It’s not like, heroin, or fentanyl, or cocaine which are specific chemicals. You could never really say “marijuana plants in general” have a specific indication for a specific disease, it would need to be much more specific in terms of what is actually being given, and only that would have the evidence and therefore the FDA approval. Like take epidiolex/cannibidiol for instance, a single chemical, 25 mg/kg/day was found effective as an add on therapy to another primary therapy for reduction in seizure frequency in children with Lennox gestaut syndrome and dravet syndrome. That’s the specific indication and dosage that the FDA agrees is effective based on the evidence. Lots of other reasons too you’d never see an FDA approval for “all marijuana plants in general,” but the unpredictable mix of tons of different drugs across many many strains of marijuana plants and variability between the plants itself is enough to make this a practical impossibility. It’s definitely contributed a few medications that have roles in certain diseases though, like many other plants before it.

      In short, you’ll still need to convince individual states to legalize it or make medical marijuana laws if you want an actual marijuana plant or plant preparation prescribed to you. Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance coverage could all be different (and even different by insurance company), but there’s at least a chance it could give coverage now, whereas it was impossible before. This also makes marijuana research easier and helps reduce any federal criminal penalties.

          • @[email protected]
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            78 months ago

            Low dose therapeutic ketamine is apparently used in some cases of depression and trauma therapy as wel

            • Schadrach
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              28 months ago

              Usually that’s the highly related compound called esketamine, which is stronger and is administered in smaller doses nasally and has fewer side effects. Sold under the brand name Spravato. The commercials for it have some things listed as side effects I don’t think I’d seen in a drug commercial before: “can cause … feeling disconnected from yourself, your thoughts, space and time”

          • gregorum
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            78 months ago

            Thank you for at least trying to answer my question. I appreciate it.

          • @[email protected]
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            118 months ago

            Perhaps if you didn’t just think about yourself and your perspective you might see that the other person asking a question and someone answering it will be useful if and when other people just web searches and append lemmy like we used to Reddit.

            We can all search anything at any time, but sometimes it nice to have the input of others and contribute to discussions for others to find later.

            “Something something plants trees…”

        • @[email protected]
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          108 months ago

          If it’s like oxy and primarily affects white folks, they won’t do shit.

          Also cops can’t get away with saying “I smelled heroin” as an excuse to terrorize minorities in a traffic stop like they historically did with grass.

        • @[email protected]
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          28 months ago

          Methamphetamine (Desoxyn) and heroin (Diacetylmorphine) are scheduled II drugs. I don’t think they will at least to the same level as Marijuana since it was previously classified as scheduled I (no medical use)

  • Billiam
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    238 months ago

    Critics point out that as a Schedule III drug, marijuana would remain regulated by the DEA. That means the roughly 15,000 cannabis dispensaries in the U.S. would have to register with the DEA like regular pharmacies and fulfill strict reporting requirements, something that they are loath to do and that the DEA is ill equipped to handle.

    Aren’t these dispensaries currently registered with the DEA? Why would lowering it on the schedule change that?

    • @[email protected]
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      398 months ago

      I think currently they’re not. They’re registered to their state as they’re still technically illegal at the federal level. The DEA has taken kind of a don’t ask don’t tell approach to marijuana and is currently relying on a patchwork of state regulations to manage it because for a variety of (terrible) reasons they haven’t taken the sane step of reclassifying it. It honestly shouldn’t be a scheduled drug or at worst a schedule 4. Moving it from schedule 1 to 3 is better than nothing, but it’s still a chicken shit maneuver.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        Devil’s advocate here…

        I’m pretty sure the DEA has a ton of funding directly tied to Marijuana enforcement, they can’t just deschedule it entirely without losing that funding immediately. Those funding requirements need to be reclassified for other uses.

    • MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown
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      108 months ago

      They are registered to the various states programs, but I can’t imagine there is a way to register with the DEA to sell a Schedule 1 drug for recreational use.

    • @[email protected]
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      88 months ago

      As someone unfamiliar with the law my guess would be that the DEA doesn’t have mechanisms in place to register distributors of schedule 1 substances, since it doesn’t recognize them as having any legitimate use.

    • @[email protected]
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      58 months ago

      Nah. As a schedule I, it’s in the same category as things like meth. Tito your corner drug dealer ain’t telling the feds where he’s selling, right?

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        Meth is schedule 2. Which highlights how absurd cannabis being schedule 1 for so long was.

            • @[email protected]
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              58 months ago

              And crack… But not powder cocaine.

              I’m sure that has NOTHING to do with the types of people who tend to use one or the other.

              • Schadrach
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                18 months ago

                I mean, cocaine hydrochloride (aka powder cocaine) does have medical uses. No, seriously. In the form of a nasal spray before certain kinds of nasal surgeries as a local anesthetic. According to my wife it also opens your sinuses like nothing else, as she’s had a couple of such surgeries.

                There is some evidence suggesting there’s a higher risk for abuse and dependence when cocaine is injected or smoked as opposed to intranasal use, but the research there is kinda limited. While the racial angle is certainly relevant, that there is no accepted medical use for cocaine base (aka crack) but there is for cocaine hydrochloride probably also plays a part in why crack is in the “no medical uses” schedule and cocaine hydrochloride is in the same schedule as fentanyl (you know, the one for highly abusable drugs that do have accepted medical applications). The laws calling out crack specifically as opposed to merely referencing the drug schedules are all about race though.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      198 months ago

      Probably nothing immediately. The biggest advantages of rescheduling are in regard to federal sentencing guidelines and, imo more importantly, federal funding for research. Schedule 1 drugs (which MJ is currently) are defined as having no medical value, so research funding is practically impossible.