DEA drug scheduling process illogical, should be reformed
With the legalization of marijuana in states such as Colorado and Washington, drug law is starting to ease up on the state level. However, national associations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), still spread misinformation about drugs, and its current drug scheduling is misleading and potentially harmful.
The DEA organizes drugs into five categories, Schedule 1 through 5. Schedule 1 drugs are supposed to be very dangerous, “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The three most instantly recognizable Schedule 1 drugs are heroin, LSD and marijuana.
By any metric, heroin is vastly more dangerous than marijuana or LSD. Heroin is extremely addictive and has been responsible for the collapse of many people’s lives. This is in sharp contrast to LSD and cannabis, which are virtually impossible to overdose on and have low addiction potential.
These aren’t cherry-picked examples, either. There are multiple irrational classifications on the DEA’s list. Cocaine, a drug with a high addiction risk, is Schedule 2, which is lower than cannabis. Even meth, which rivals heroin in its capacity to destroy lives, is Schedule 2.
Part of the problem is that it is difficult to study drugs in general. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) only receives around $1 billion in funding every year, not nearly enough to keep up with the nation’s ever-changing drug trends. On top of this, researchers looking for a grant to study a drug must have an established background, and, once he or she gets a grant, it usually takes four to five years to complete research — by which time the current drug climate has changed completely. All these layers of bureaucracy create an environment that is not friendly to drug reform.
Stephanie Hamborsky, Plan II and biology senior and the president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said drug scheduling is “completely misinformed, with no objective analysis.”
Hamborsky added that drug policy is based on the interests of big pharmaceutical companies. While there is no way to prove this, it is interesting that prescription drugs with established addiction potential, such as Xanax, are listed very low on the DEA’s list at Schedule 4.
The problem with grouping drugs such as marijuana with drugs such as heroin is that it destroys the government’s credibility. If a high school kid, who has been told all their life by the drug education program DARE and the government that marijuana is an immensely dangerous and addictive drug, tries it and finds out that it is marginally dangerous at best, what does that tell them about the other drugs that they’ve been told about? If authority figures lie about marijuana, why wouldn’t they be lying about heroin?
The government sabotages its own credibility with its outdated and misinformed drug laws. To salvage credibility, the government should put more money toward drug research in order to properly classify drugs, increase awareness of the truly dangerous drugs and cure the dangerous misconceptions that have entered the American consciousness.
Filed under: General Problems
The DEA scheduling is as much a political black list for certain molecules as it is an attempt at qualification of risk of certain molecules. It’s analogous to the “enemy” aircraft silhouettes that anti-aircraft gunner and pilots had to memorize in WWII, except that it has the Cannabis silhouette, one of a lumbering, three engine Fokker commercial airliner, in the same grouping as the Me-109 and Fw-190. It’s there on account of a political agneda. Heroin, which can be likened unto an He-111, is also a Schedule I because of political chicanery. The Establishment has deemed that it has no legitimate use in medicine. Try telling that to the folks in the UK. The folks at the DEA and FDA are counting on the ignorance of the general public to pull off this slight of hand. Between the advent if the internet and the rising number of individuals who have decided to educate itself on these issues, more members of the general public have become aware of the prevaricative nature of this official Pharmacopoeia non grata.
Lets look at some examples that never made any sense to me as a pharmacist. Fiorinal is C-III, whereas Fioricet is not scheduled at all. They are identical, except that the former contains aspirin and the latter acetaminophen. Soma for over 50 years was not scheduled. It came to market in 1959. It had been known from day one that it is a pro-drug for Meprobamate, aka Equanil and Miltown; Meprobamate has been C-IV for as long as I can remember, and yet it wasn’t until 2010 that it was re-classified as a C-IV. Tramadol, aka Ultram, is a synthetic analog of Codeine and came to market about 20 years ago. It had been available in Europe since the late ’70s. It was not scheduled and yet it was identified as am abusable substance by the pharmacists and prescribers in this country almost immediately. The Europeans had known this for over a decade previous and I’m sure our regulatory officials were aware of this European experience too. It wasn’t until August of 2014, last year, that Tramadol was re-classified as a C-IV. There are more examples, but these are the ones that came to mind as I typed this.
It appears to me that Big Pharma has had as much a nefarious role in the scheduling of these pharmaceutical as anyone. The entire schedule is an blend of some agents being on the list on account of the corroborating science. Some are there and are placed where they are on account of a political agenda and some are there, or not, on account of an economic agenda being fronted by Big Pharma. Like everything else that plays a significant role in the so-called War on Drugs, the DEA Schedule of Controlled Substances is an amalgam of some truth, some lies and a whole bunch of political and economic agendas being played. The War on Drugs is an abject failure. It, and it’s tools, e.g., this Schedule and the policy makers, need to go. None of this has worked. The “treatment” is much worse than the societal disease that is being treated. We, as a people, have been gamed and scared into accepting a whole slew of behaviors by the State, behaviors that would have not been tolerated if this would have all been exposed to the glaring light of day. As our elected representatives are lacking the backbone to call this prohibitionist policy for what it is, a failure, it’s up to us to make our collective voice heard and force an end to this farce. It’s time to try something new, a something that is far less malignant that what we now know not to work.