You want to study it to find medical uses? Sorry, it’s Schedule I!
Boing boing is a blog, a good blog to be sure, but a den of journalism it is not. I assure you that you are correct in assumimg that this story was posted for entertainment. What I don’t grasp is how you got
out from it. Do you really believe that the US society is predominantly racist/murderous/classist? As far as the police, I assure you they are not predominantly classist, some are likely racist but I would imagine no more than the general population of the planet at large. Their draconian behavior does not stem from the conditions you prescribe, it comes from totalitarianism. In their reality, contempt of cop is the most haneous of crimes and they dole out as much punishment for it as they believe their police unioin is likely to weasle them out of.
Do note, though, that it said “no approved medical use,” which is quite different from “no evidence of medical benefit”
(I am not, BTW, defending the federal government’s classification scheme nor their drug approval process – I’m just talking about what is, not what should be. I’m well aware of what idiots the feds can be at times. But they don’t listen to me.)
Not for the people stuck on the bus with him.
MUGGER: [holding a pistol in each hand] This is a stickup! Give me your wallets!
VICTIMS: Here, just take them and go!
[awkward pause as mugger realizes both hands are full]
MUGGER: Could you just… stick them in my mouth?
Fentanyl is mostly dangerous when it gets mixed up in your heroin… I would say of the transdermal patches they’re dangerous because of people not waiting long enough to get a steady state; the oral swabs are pretty benign.
Heroin is legally in the analgesic quiver across the pond-- it’s just a pro-drug of morphine-- I’m not sure why we don’t use it here (not why it’s not popular but more why it’s illegal). Seems like it would act a lot like dilaudid. I mean codeine is just a prodrug of morphine and that’s fine. Demerol is a big fat fucking mess of an opioid and we still use it. Methadone… is just weird. I knew some chronic pain docs that swore by it.
Yes. Also misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, antisemitic… I’m sure others will add onto that list, as I’m sure I missed some of the things America is.
And ableist, homophobic, transphobic… why yes, they are. What neither @Wanderfound, nor I, nor most anyone else on this board believe is that this is unfixable, unless people deny that these issues exist. Nor do we claim other countries are perfect.
But as long as people are content with erasure, then nothing will happen to make things better.
It’s baked right into the bones. If police spent the same time in upperclass neighborhoods (which are coincidentally, predominantly white), surveilling their residents withe the same fervor they spend on poor people, there would be mass arrests for violence, weapons violations, drug crimes… but you don’t see it, because the policing isn’t equal. Nor is the justice system when the upper class who do get caught have lawyers on retainer to ensure they never see a court or jail, while a poor person is lucky to get five minutes with a sleep-deprived public defender before getting in front of a judge who just finished assuring his good buddy/old frat bro Sidney Reynolds IV that he’ll make sure the inconvenience of having a police officer knock on the front door will never happen again, but is going to show this gutter-dweller the meaning of law and order.
The whole system, from the laws down to their enforcement is racist, sexist, classist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. Denying or ignoring that just perpetuates it and makes it worse.
Thanks. I knew that scheduling was purely federal, but I didn’t know that when a doctor writes a form for a patient to go to a dispensary and get marijuana that they can’t legally call it a “prescription.” It would be nice to live in a place with rational drug laws
No, I haven’t missed the news. I live in Oregon, and previously had a state prescription until it was approved for recreational use in 2015. But the Federal government still considers it an illegal substance, that you cannot prescribe or have. And from time to time, legal dispensaries in California would be busted by Federal marshals.
The Feds set what can and cannot be prescribed in the United States. Marijuana is a schedule I drug and cannot legally be prescribed. Every state that does so is breaking Federal Law, and if the Fed wanted to flex its muscles, it could. With almost every state having some kind of legal or tolerated mechanism in place for it’s use, I suspect marijuana will be rescheduled at some point.
Not until we have a semi-sane administration in place it won’t.
I doubt sanity will have much to do with it. It’s less of an emotional or “hot-button” issue than abortion or human rights. The political reality is, when all 50 states have made something legal in their jurisdiction by the will of the voters, there will need to be some action on the part of the Feds. Even if that action is taking it off of the schedule, saying, “Okay then, it’s a recreational product, like tobacco or alcohol. There’s no need to prescribe it, because it’s legal for adults to have in approved quantities.”
Also, there’s money involved, so once people like John Boehner really start seeing their portfolios grow, look how fast it becomes legal Federally.
Yeah… people tend to get “emotional” when some of their most basic rights are being taken away… That seems like the imminently logical reaction, as a matter of fact. We all should be angry when basic human rights are rampantly violated by the state.
Yikes, I hear it now that it’s repeated to me. That was not how I meant it. Opponents of abortion and human rights are really emotional and passionate about their viewpoints, in ways that opponents of marijuana, somehow, aren’t.
Except that marijuana advocates are often focused on human rights issues as well because of how it intersects with mass incarceration and racism.
I’d argue that emotion and passion are not something that we should assume is at odds with logic and facts, but rather are part of furthering good arguments based on facts and logic. We abandon that part of our human nature in seeking to improve the world at our peril.
Whoops realize I forgot a footnote. Spoiler: it’s not a coincidence at all.
I’m not talking about marijuana advocates, though, I’m talking about marijuana opponents.
Who are not as passionate about their subject as abortion opponents, or human rights opponents.
Oh, I think probably some of them are, especially since we still have states that where it is illegal. I just think perhaps they are less well positioned right now than the proponents are… those who oppose human rights are just better funded right now, I think.
Wow, sounds like a bleak dystopia, nobody must want to live there.