FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 12, 2014
February 12, 2014
EIGHTEEN
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS CALL ON OBAMA TO RESCHEDULE MARIJUANA
Current
Scheduling Limits Medical Research, Creates Hurdles to Legitimate Business
Bill
to “Unmuzzle Drug Czar” Also Introduced
WASHINGTON,
DC–Citing
high numbers of arrests, billions of dollars wasted, disproportionate effects
on black Americans and the relative safety of marijuana, a group of eighteen Congress
members today called
on President Obama to “delist or classify marijuana in a more appropriate way,
at the very least eliminating it from Schedule I or II.” The move comes in
light of Obama’s recent comments to The New Yorker that marijuana is no more
harmful than alcohol and that it was important to allow legalization efforts in
Colorado and Washington to proceed.
Currently, marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug,
a classification for drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential
for abuse. Because of this classification, most medical research on marijuana
is prohibited, it cannot be prescribed in accordance with federal law and it
creates a host of tax and business regulation problems for state-legal
marijuana businesses trying to comply in good faith with all relevant laws.
“No drug should be listed as Schedule I, which limits
potentially life-saving research into both benefits and dangers of a substance
and guarantees a violent, illegal market for the product,” said Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition executive director Major Neill Franklin (Ret.) “This is
even more true of marijuana right now, when after four decades of failure,
states are doing their best to find something that works and federal
regulations keep interfering with their doing so.”
A bill
to allow the Drug Czar to study the legalization of marijuana and no longer
require him or her to oppose attempts to legalize marijuana was also
introduced today.
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