Screw the DEA, this pot is legal

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/marijuana/article/Screw-the-DEA-this-pot-is-legal-9144534.php

In 2012, the citizens of Washington state and Colorado voted by large measures to go one step better than using marijuana for medical purposes. We voted to throw out the war on marijuana almost entirely. Alaska, Oregon did the same and so have other states.

Then (*poke in the eye with a sharp stick*) Congress voted twice to defund DEA activities against marijuana in states where it is legal for recreational or medical purposes.

But the DEA is struggling. It’s floundering. It’s gasping and panicked. What if California goes? Well, then that will seal the deal. So, the DEA has been ramping up its efforts to put the stink back on the cannabis flower.

On Thursday, it refused long-standing petitions to reschedule marijuana out of the top category of drugs with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.” (More on this below.)

In a June “unclassified intelligence report” titled “Residential marijuana grows in Colorado: The new meth house.” And then backup it’s ridiculous smear with …

“Marijuana grows often cause extensive damage to the houses where they are maintained and are increasingly the causes of house fires, blown electrical transformers, and environmental damage. Much like the “meth houses” of the 1990s, many of these homes may ultimately be rendered uninhabitable.”

Yeah, well the problem with meth is that it destroys lives in ways you don’t have dig through thousands of MRI studies to find faint indications of. It’s pretty darn obvious (same with alcohol, BTW), and meth kills people through the direct effects on the users body. Marijuana has not killed anyone.

RELATED STORY: Why anti-pot crusaders need marijuana to change the brain

But! They just saying that growing marijuana indoors can cause problems. Yes and growing tomatoes indoor could cause problems too. But, so they could have said: “Residential tomato grows in America: The new meth houses?”

In other words … Dude, I ain’t buying it.

In his letter tortuously explaining the DEA’s rescheduling ruling, Acting Administrator Chick Rosenberg argued that marijuana should stay where it is until some rigorous FDA-approved study shows it has medical benefit. And, of course, it has. THC-based Marinol was rescheduled in 1999 to level three: “A drug, available by prescription, considered to be non-narcotic and to have a low risk of physical or mental dependence,” explains Wikipedia.

But that’s not the whole plant. That just the THC or a synthetic version of it. One could split hairs into infinity down this rabbit hole of thinking. The simple fact is, “marijuana” as a whole plant will never meet any FDA standards. How could it? Consequently, one has to look at the whole planet and its whole plant use, backed by studies, showing positive effects. But that is not how the FDA process works, and the DEA knows it.

Mr. Rosenberg et al. are hiding behind a see-through cloth, and no one is buying it. As our colleague over at SFGate’s Smell The Truth blog wrote Monday:

The Drug Enforcement Administration is enduring perhaps the most pronounced round of criticism in its 43 year-history, after a widely discredited decision last week to keep treating marijuana as the most dangerous drug on the planet. …

DEA critics from Washington DC to the heartland are now blasting the DEA, calling the ruling “hypocrisy”, “absurd”, “heartless” and 2016’s version of the “flat Earth” theory.

Then Smell The Truth summarizes the true negative health effects related to marijuana:

“About 700,000 Americans will be arrested for marijuana this year. Pot arrests are the leading type of drug arrest in the nation, and drug arrests are the most frequent arrests police make in America. Blacks in the U.S. have about are arrested at almost four times the rates of white for pot, despite similar levels of use, the ACLU reports.”

So, it’s time to simply say: “Screw the DEA. This pot is legal.”

And while we’re at it, let’s defund the DEA’s enforcement of those federal pot laws and put people in office who respect the whole scientific picture — people who don’t want to put a bunch of mostly poor, black or latino Americans in jail for something legalization has proven to be far less harmful than even advocates thought might happen.

It is election season after all.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.