Warning: It may seem for part of this post like I agree with the Trump administration decision.
Heroin can be prescribed (under a different name) for medical uses in other countries. LSD and psilocybin are showing promise in clinical trials for some therapies. Obviously cannabis is used by many people for many therapeutic uses.
To be on schedule 1, a drug is supposed to be the case that, “The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical treatment use in the U.S.” That gives the idea that this is a question of whether the medical community accepts the value of the drug for therapeutic purposes. That sounds like it’s letting science lead the way.
But it never was. Whether a drug is addictive is a question for science, whether a drug is effective at treating conditions is a question for science. Whether a drug ought to be regulated or outlawed is a question of politics.
So to some extent, I’m with the current administration on their idea that the question of whether a drug ought to be schedule 1 is a question of values, because I think the idea it was ever about science was a lie told to try to give the weight of expertise to a political decision that was made to suppress Democratic votes. That kind of abuse of the authority of science played a big part in creating a lot of problems we have today, including the rejection of science.
The outcomes of policies is a matter that science can study. Which outcomes we want is a question of values. I want 1) to get people effective drugs to treat illness and pain, 2) to reduce the harms caused by drugs, and 3) to let people have a good time if that’s what their into. Those are my values. I think the best evidence says that the way to achieve that would be with regulation on the quality of products (similar to food safety regulation) and no criminal restrictions.
My observation tells me that the outcomes desired by the Trump administration are more like: 1) make Trump feel important, 2) maintain power, 3) translate power into monetary gain. They, therefore, are going to want a different set of policies.
So I don’t think the real problem here is the rejection of science. We ought to be better at separating what we learn from science from the political and value decisions. When you elect plutocrats, you get plutocratic laws; and science, if they paid attention to it, would help them figure out how to be better at being plutocrats.
