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Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that the headline is click-baity, and the stats are a bit suspect, I still want to see headlines like these in the mainstream press, because it raises questions about why MJ is classified as a Schedule-I drug after all?

I'm not a smoker (maybe once or twice a year, at most?). But the blatant lying by the government (that MJ has no medicinal value and is more dangerous than meth), which flies in the face of science, _and_ the governments prohibition on research, really bothers me. Are we a theocracy? Shouldn't we let science inform our decisions??

Edit: gah! I meant Schedule-I, not Schedule-III ! Edited.

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Unless I'm mistaken, marijuana is a Schedule I drug.

https://www.google.com/search?q=schedule+1+drugs&ie=utf-8&oe...

Except in the UN schedule where it is Schedule II: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...

You're correct, schedule I is "high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and unsafe to use even under medical supervision".

Schedule III would be "less potential for abuse than I and II, accepted medical use, abuse may lead to high psychological dependence or low to moderate physical dependence"

(Schedule II is for high abuse potential and severe physical or psychological dependence drugs which nonetheless have accepted medical use e.g. cocaine, amphetamines, morphine).

A problematic side effect of I is that being allowed to study them is extremely difficult, so getting enough data to move a drug from schedule I to schedule II is near-impossible.

> schedule I is "high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and unsafe to use even under medical supervision"

I think even the most vocal marijuana opponents would agree schedule 1 classification is insane. Stricter control than cocaine? Really?

> I think even the most vocal marijuana opponents would agree schedule 1 classification is insane.

The most vocal marijuana opponents frequently publicly proclaim (perhaps with different wording) all three elements of Schedule I classification, so I doubt that.

> Stricter control than cocaine?

I would expect that the only disagreement many of those vocal marijuana opponents would have with that is that Cocaine should also be Schedule I, not that marijuana should not be schedule I.

Yet it's legal to smoke, with a license, at our nation's capital.

I don't think anyone, regardless of their own take on the issues, would argue that current drug policy in the U.S. is internally consistent.

True. I wasn't necessarily trying to imply that anybody does. It was more to illustrate that we live in one of those countries now. In most of the US, you could get thrown into jail but it's fine as long as you're where all the politicians are.

> but it's fine as long as you're where all the politicians are.

Though, to be fair: the DC MJ laws were changed by the voters of DC, despite threats from Republicans to repeal that law. The Congress did not vote itself a puff-puff-pass law.

Also: you cannot toke up in the federal areas of DC (a large chunk of DC is under the feds, including national parks and monuments), despite what the DC law says.

Unless you mean local DC politicians, that doesn't make sense. The Congressmen/women are the ones who are trying to keep it illegal in DC. Pot legalization in DC has nothing to do with it being where "the politicians" are.

You are right. I corrected my comment.

We don't really let science inform our policy decisions. They are driven by other motives, most frequently business lobbying. Not a Theocracy, more of an Oligarchy.

Racism

It's a shame that this is being downvoted, as the prohibition of marijuana was in fact very racially motivated [1].

1. http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/c...

A discussion of the history of drug legislation and its intended target (Chinese immigrants in SF, for instance) would lend more weight to your comment.

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