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Federal chokehold on marijuana stymies studies on epilepsy, autism (spectrumnews.org)
229 points by chc2149 on Sept 11, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 167 comments



> Federal law vs. state law: While the DEA was insisting on thoroughly vetting everyone who came into contact with the tiny amount of marijuana product used in our study, the reality was that less than a mile from the hospital, anyone could walk into a boutique shop or dispensary and buy it.

Why does a drug have to be legalized to be studied? If it can be purchased down the road, why are you involving the DEA at all?

Is it solely in the pursuit of funding? Or will some journals not publish research if the DEA is not involved?

(Legitimate question.)


Marijuana is defined as a schedule one drug by the DEA, meaning they believe it has no accepted medical value and should not be studied. Being in possession of or trying to purchase this drug for a medical study would therefore be illegal. Publishing the results would be admitting you performed a federal crime and you would be arrested. Additionally, human studies require approval by an on site or third party institutional review board prior to initiation to validate that they are ethical. It is unlikely that an IRB would approve such a study because it would be viewed as unethical and it would shift some liability to the university.

Its possible to perform studies with illegal drugs that are not schedule one however. For example, cocaine is schedule 2, and I helped work on a study where we purchased cocaine legally from Sigma and administered it to animals to study something which actually had nothing to do with the stimulant effects of the drug.


That's not true at all. There are plenty of studies conducted on schedule 1 drugs. Yes, you need to get permission from the DEA to possess and use the drug, but it happens.

There are over 170 active clinical trials in the US for THC.[1]

[1]https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=thc&cntry=...


Fair enough, my understanding was there was nearly a categorical ban on research w/ schedule 1 drugs. I am pleased to see this is not the case. Thank you for the correction.


Look, this is absurd. Yes, it's illegal but so what? Plenty of people have MMJ cards, have scanned their ID at a dispensary, or have applied for state cultivation licenses.

The idea that academia is somehow prevented from engaging in this field because it's federally illegal is not credible and it tarnishes the integrity of the field.


My understanding is that it is possible, but involves a lot of bureaucratic red tape. (https://www.factcheck.org/wp-content/cache/wp-rocket/www.fac...)

I imagine that in some locales, the political climate is such that what Thriptic is saying is quite the reality -- it is much too risky.

That being said, with acceptance of cannabis legality growing, there does seem to be a shift where more formal organizations are involved in research, like the CMCR (https://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/) mentioned in the Factcheck article. CMCR is located in the University of California in San Diego -- it is not surprising to find out that a formal research base is in a state more politically and legally friendly to cannabis.


I agree that it is absurd that we cannot study weed legally. At the end of the day when it comes down to illegal studies, it all comes down to risk tolerance: Is an individual willing to lose their ability to practice academic science (in that they can't get a university position, can't get federal funding, and may have to absorb a felony) in order to perform a study that the government says is not ok? For most people including me, that answer is no. How you choose to proceed is up to you, but I will tell you right now that embarking on such a study will end poorly.


> I will tell you right now that embarking on such a study will end poorly.

Source?


Are you really asking me for a source to prove that being caught doing something massively illegal will result in negative consequences? I'm going to assume that when we talk about running a study, we are talking about using marijuana in humans in a study, meaning a clinical trial.

In order to perform a clinical trial with marijuana, by law investigators would need to get an IND (investigational new drug) application approved by the FDA as FDA does not recognize marijuana as a safe and effective drug for any indication. Part of this involves DEA review, and DEA will almost certainly say no. Let's assume for the sake of argument that you do not care about getting approval to run your study. If you do not get an IND approval and you run a clinical trial anyway, your physicians will almost certainly lose their medical licenses, all participants will be subject to multiple criminal offenses, the group will lose all their funding, they be slapped with enormous amounts of fees, and participants will likely lose their university and / or hospital appointments.

https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421163.h....

https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ResourcesforYou/ucm2681....

I don't have a concrete example for as to what will happen because to my knowledge no one has been stupid enough to give the FDA the middle finger and run an unlicensed clinical trial. FDA would never let this go unanswered because it would completely undermine their regulatory authority and set a horrible precedent. In effect, this is a perma-ban level offense, and people that do it should expect to get massively punished.


Civil disobedience surely looks stupid through the lens of the oppressor, but perhaps someone with the ability and connections will sacrifice their livelihood to show us how we as a society are sacrificing ours.


> In order to perform a clinical trial with marijuana... investigators would need to get ... approved by the FDA... Part of this involves DEA review...

It only took you 3 coarse and unhelpful posts to answer my legitimate question. Thanks for your cooperation. (5 Whys? Only 3 Whys were needed here.)


Yeah true, sorry for being a dick. I'm sick today, exhausted, and surviving on stimulants; hence my aggression and suboptimal reading comprehension. I shouldn't be expecting other people to deal with me in that state, so again my bad.


Sure if you completely ignore how research is funded, how one makes a career out of performing research and why research is performed in the first place. Specifically, anyone performing medical research on marijuana is likely to lose any grants they have, is likely to lose their job for putting their employer at risk, is likely to not be able to find future employment for being so cavalier in their research and is likely to not see any meaningful result from their research because the drugs can't be produced in the first place.


Those are patriots and leaders if you ask me.


Not everyone is interested in politics.


But the study would be okay if they merely interviewed individuals who purchased cannabis for their own recreation? What if these individuals were using it recreationally according to a schedule suggested by the interviewers?


Suggesting that study participants use a drug of unknown purity, composition, and dosing would definitely not be ok or safe. Encouraging illegal activity generally is not ok. Interviewing self-professed users without instructing them to use the drug would likely be ok but of limited value.


The drugs purity is well known in many recreational marijuana states. Have you looked over CAs laws? https://www.bcc.ca.gov/law_regs/index.html


Parent did not say they would be purchasing in a state where recreational dispensaries exist or where weed is legal at a state level. Those are unstated assumptions.


I don't know about other legal states but here in Washington the purity, composition, and dose of cannabis products are highly regulated and come with standardized labels.


Now sure, but what about 40 years ago?


We're discussing now, not the sociopolitical environment of the 1970s. Please stay on topic.


Maybe an independent group could manage the schedule and have lab tests done so the drug details could be determined. Then the academic researchers could track the subjects, analyze the results and publish.


The vast majority of universities are heavily subsidized by the federal government. If the DEA doesn't like what your researchers are doing they can likely throw the book at the university in a way that gets them cut off until the issue is resolved (which can take awhile). The last place a university wants enemies is in the federal government.


I don't think scientists are excited about criminal charges for possession and distribution.


Good luck finding someone in these progressive bastions willing to arrest you.


These crimes are federal, not local, so that's not relevant.


Just as with video piracy, the civil disobedience to support the market is a necessary risk that supporters must be willing to make.


It is one thing to share a movie and possibly be fined with XXX$ because of "piracy". Its quite another thing to risk your respectability, career and future research funding -- all hanging in the balance when a federal felony charge is thrust upon you.


Isn't piracy also a federal crime, thus the FBI warning on all non-pirated DVDs?


Crimes have different sorts of consequences. A drug felony will usually haunt folks for life.

A doctor or pharmacist will likely lose their license - even if they don't, most places won't employ them. Slews of places won't employ them after that drug charge. Some places withhold benefits and some will turn them down for housing. Yes, some of this happens with other crimes as well, but there are special restrictions for folks convicted of drug crimes in many places.

Most folks caught for piracy wind up with a lawsuit instead of a felony from the government. I couldn't find numbers with a quick google search of how many folks actually got a criminal charge instead of a lawsuit, honestly - most of the articles talk about getting sued and being "guilty" in that respect.

Getting sued has completely different consequences. You might not pass a background check (so you might not have your research position), but it might not affect you much. You do not have to check the "have you ever been convicted of a felony" box that is popular in many states. And so on.


> A doctor or pharmacist will likely lose their license - even if they don't, most places won't employ them.

Yep, in my state, a simple Dept of Health Provider Credential Search (whether by public or prospective employer) will give you Enforcement Action: YES in nice big bold red type as soon as any such thing happens.


When studying a drug for medical purposes you want to know it is pure. Down the street how knows how much active ingredient you actually get (this is the problem with herbs in general - they do not all contain the same amount of active ingredient, and it is possible something unknown in half the samples is the real active ingredient)

Marijuana has been studied overseas.


Cannabis sold in WA State lists THC and THCa percentages. Most are in the 20%-25% range. Vape cartridges are 60%-90% THC.


To get some historical perspective, this all started back with the stitch in time that saved nine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_...

FDR's pressure on the supreme court brought about the abuses of the commerce clause. Before this, things like Prohibition required a constitutional amendment rather than a law like The Controlled Substances Act of 1970.


Everyone confused about the fucked up laws around drug control and the like in the united states:

It is about locking up poor people in order to keep them from voting.

It is about filling our prisons with non-violent offenders so we can force them to work for slave wages, and line the owners of the prisons and the politicians they fund's pockets.

It's about political suppression, not about some moralistic crusade to protect people from drugs.

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." - John Ehrlichman


I think you're being both too cynical and not cynical enough here, in that the more important causes are stupider and more petty than you're making out.

Nixon did very much like that he was screwing over black people and hippies with the war on drugs but the main reason he pursued this was that rising crime rates were freaking out voters. They wanted to vote for people with a plan to fix this but crime was mostly a state and local issue. By claiming that cracking down on drugs would solve crime Nixon was able to claim that he had a solution to crime.

But the reason we have such weird laws about marijuana in particular is that "marijuana induced insanity" was a popular criminal defense in some places prior to criminalization and that led most people at the time to think of marijuana primarily in terms of inducing violent crime.


> It is about locking up poor people in order to keep them from voting.

Poor people already don't vote in high numbers.

> It is about filling our prisons with non-violent offenders so we can force them to work for slave wages, and line the owners of the prisons and the politicians they fund's pockets.

That's part of it, but private prisons hold a small minority of the prison population.

> It's about political suppression, not about some moralistic crusade to protect people from drugs.

It's about political suppression, but also about perceptions that "only bad people smoke" etc etc. Maybe the leaders are fully malevolent in their intentions, but they get their support from the populace who they misled about the drug problem in the first place.


A lot of people really believe that marijuana is some horrible substance that will ruin you. My dad was one of those people and I believed him until I tried it in my 20’s and saw that it’s a vice akin to drinking at its worst, and often very positive.

I think some people had hidden racist or imperialist intentions and so found what they could hate about blacks and hippies and spread the lies. (Edit: obviously overt racist intentions have affected minorities forever.) I assume much of it was malicious and conscious and much was genuine belief that came from horrible racism. Then those people made television shows and news stories about how marijuana makes you dumb (conveniently diffusing any intellectual currency hippies had). People like my dad saw the propaganda and believed it wholeheartedly, and then I did too. So far removed from the 1950’s shows like Dragnet that laid it on thick, and having grown up in a different place full of friendly pot smoking hippies, I had a different experience and saw the lies for what they were.

But propaganda is started by those who want influence and believed by those who are unable to see through the lies.


> My dad was one of those people and I believed him until I tried it in my 20’s and saw that it’s a vice akin to drinking at its worst, and often very positive.

Not the whole truth, as there are known rare side effects that are significantly detrimental. In my experience it also seems harder/rarer to be a high functioning regular user. But yeah.

If I do accept that position though - I'm not sold the argument is in favour of anything but prohibition


I’m sure the same would be said of alcohol. For either - what good has prohibition ever done for us?


Tobacco and Alcohol being legal whilst we've criminalised weed/amphetamines/cocaine doesn't make much sense to me. The arbitrary lines are clearly spurious and historical.

I'm broadly in favour of selling every single drug to the public without need of a prescription, let people do whatever the fuck they want and live with the consequences (but there will be societal consequences too). Mostly I just long for consistency


The most recent Jon Oliver[0] was on this topic. Disenfranchising people was one of the main reasons for the prohibition:

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpPyLcQ2vdI


Sure maybe the Nixon campaign/administration used laws that were on the books to target certain groups...but the laws already existed for more than a generation.

Similarly, private for profit prisons, while they existed earlier, weren’t really a thing (as we know them today) until the 1980’s.

So the idea drug laws were created as a weapon against hippies and blacks (30 years in advance) or to line pockets of prison owners (50 years before the true for profit prison system) seems off. Even political suppression, women just got the right to vote, blacks were already actively being suppressed from voting by Law when marijuana prohibition laws were created (and continued to be until the civil rights movement and the voting rights act of 1965).


Right, while the above are all disgusting side effects of the shitty implementation of American drug law, I think good old fashioned American Puritanism is to blame for the original targeting.


If you think US drug laws are bad, look at Asia. Societies often have disproportionately harsh taboos on certain substances while being totally fine with others.


Wasn't it the cotton industry lobbying against industrial hemp?


Exactly follow the money. At the time of the federal marijuana stamp tax act, a flood of propaganda was distributed through the media including infamous propaganda films (such as Reefer Madness). The word hemp was never used or uttered, instead the Mexican slang Marihuana. This was done to confuse the public who never would have outlawed hemp (after all it was a crop the founding fathers grew and the US government accepted as a form of tax payment).

Looking back on the propaganda people do come to the more in your face conclusion it was about anti-Mexican immigration, but that was just a catalyst for the for winning the PR war and muddying the waters, as the American public already had medicine cabinets full of cannabis tinctures and a positive history with hemp.


Did the Puritans distinguish between cannabis and alcohol?


Not at all.

There's only one good reason; Psychedelics make people question their existence and therefore, their social situation as well. The dictators don't like that.

Non-psychedelic drugs like opiates are banned to keep people in the mountains from defending their lands using opium money. I know, iv seen it done.


The TV series Ozark depicts this.


I cant find this interview anywhere. I only see the far left leaning media sites reporting on it. No evidence this statement was actually made by John Ehrlichman. Do you have any?



But where is the interview???

I dont trust any of these sources.


Three of these sources link to it: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/


In the future, before asking for sources, please tell people your whitelist of valid sources.

Otherwise, you're just rudely wasting people's time.


You believe Forbes is falsifying news whole-cloth?


https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

His children dispute the claim, if that helps you, according the the CNN article. The man died in 1999 and it was reported years later.



Pardon me if this sounds naive, but I'm slightly confused as to how recreational marijuana is legal in 9 states but the DEA still heavily controls cannabidiol as if it were still illegal?


Not naive at all. The issue is typically framed as States Rights and it's wrapped around the 10th amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This has been an issue since the 1780s, so it will take more than a couple of sentences to give the whole rundown but it's like this. A few states are saying "we have explicitly made marijuana legal for adult consumption, and since the Federal Constitution doesn't forbid this, it's legal," and the federal government is saying, "um, I don't think so. Cannabis is a schedule 1 drug that is regulated by the DEA, and it can't be made legal. And we intend to enforce this with the DEA."

So every once in a while, the DEA come in and shake up a cannabis operation (they raid the grow house or the dispensary or sometimes [rarely now] raid patients' homes) that is legal at the state level but federally illegal and there's a whole jurisdictional issue. The local police used to cooperate with the DEA in decades past, but have since told them to get bent. Now there aren't enough federal agents to deal with this, and a lot of local police forces have realized that cannabis is really not a big deal, so sometimes these things get enforced and sometimes they don't.

So we're in a gray area right now, where you can purchase cannabis legally or medically in quite a few states, but it's still illegal at the federal level. Apart from selective enforcement of this being scary, this opens up weird issues for seemingly law-abiding citizens: Since cannabis is a schedule 1 drug, using it precludes you from purchasing a gun legally at the federal level. So a law abiding citizen can easily unknowingly put themselves into a situation where they're breaking federal law even though they're abiding state laws.

If you want to see how ridiculous DEA drug scheduling is, check out this page: https://www.dea.gov/drug-scheduling


Honestly between peyote (mescaline), LSD, and marijuana you've got half of schedule one being ridiculous punishments against drugs that can be used relatively safely. Half of the schedule 1 drugs hardly even need regulation.


OxyContin ranked less dangerous than Cannabis... as someone who experienced withdrawals from less than a week of prescribed oxy use, that ranking is just pathetic.


Wait, peyote is schedule 1? How do they deal with native Americans taking that as part of religious ceremonies?


Exemptions for religious purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote#United_States


For ceremony it's legal. [0]

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1996a

Edit: wrong subject


And compare with serious studies trying to rank drug harm, e.g.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2010/11/02/scoring-...


It's complicated and far from a settled issue.

As far as I understand it you can be arrested by federal law enforcement and charged with a federal crime but you cannot be arrested by local or state law enforcement and charged with a local or state crime.

This is why the marijuana industry is "cash only" - banks won't give them a bank account because it violates federal law for them to do so. This is very undesirable for the marijuana companies because having large stacks of cash laying around is a liability and also an accounting mess. Though last I heard some companies might be trying to band together to create a "maybe semi legal bank like entity" to fix this problem.

So far the DEA has largely chosen not to go after marijuana dispensaries and growers that are operating within the parameters of state law, but that can change, and it might lead to some interesting court cases.

This also can lead to problems for ordinary citizens, if they can go into a store and buy a product it is reasonable to think the product is totally and completely legal. However, they do risk being charged with a federal crime, but that's not totally obvious.


Federal law and state law are different. Federal law is like a system level policy, while state law is like application level policy. When state law explicitly allows things disallowed by federal law, things get a bit more confusing - local police follow state law, but federal departments like the DEA follow federal law.


Essentially it is a matter of practicality. The DEA could do it themselves but is huge but they would be stretching themselves thin to replace a whole state that said we're not doing it. And said move would be costly in cooperation.

As for forcing them? Such unfunded mandates overriding official discretion cannot be forced upon a state's police force. Stop this civil rights abuse or acting outside your mandate are valid ones without funding. Start actively looking for spies is not one unless both deputized and funded. They could respond to any if they run across them without but it is within the leadership's discretion to say we have our hands full with the obvious criminals, not going on wild goose chases after guys who leave and take notebooks in public trashcans. The funding available for said purpose? Has to be used for spy chasing if taken. As always they can use federal jurisdiction to establish their own. Generally they stick to interstate matters instead of setting up shop 50 times for something redundant.


It's not "legal in 9 states", it's not prohibited by 9 states, but still prohibited federally.


That's incorrect. Those states explicitly legalized the possession and consumption of marijuana. That legalization is in conflict with the federal prohibition - so consuming marijuana in those instances is not a state crime (any more then walking down the street or eating cake is) but might still be a federal crime in those cases where the federal government has the ability to charge you (interstate commerce).


Thats my understanding of it. I'm in Massachusetts and one of the problem this new industry faces is banking. Banks are federally regulated many won't touch it (there are some "know you customer" anti money landing type laws). Thus it becomes a cash business, leading to all sorts of problems.

Being Massachusetts though, although technically it should be legal since july, they haven't issued any permits to allow it to be sold. Those issues should be resolved with luck in another 2-3 years...


>Being Massachusetts though, although technically it should be legal since july, they haven't issued any permits to allow it to be sold. Those issues should be resolved with luck in another 2-3 years...

Being Massachusetts the licensing issues will be cleared up once the appropriate pockets are lined or once a relative of a state legislator starts trying to get a license, not a minute sooner or later.


There are stores in some of the legalized states that are processing debit card transactions through some company in NYC. I expect it will be possible in MA stores.


The debit card thing is complex, and might not stand up long term.

Essentially, to the bank the debit card transactions look like they're coming from an ATM. That 'ATM' is owned by a wholly owned subsidiary of the dispensary that, IDK, ostensibly sells t shirts or something. Then the 'cash' out of the 'ATM' is immediately used in your transaction.

There's no way the banks involved don't know what's going on, but there's just enough plausible deniability that they're going with it for the moment. But all it takes is one dropping the hammer on one instance of this and everyone will be back to pure cash.


What's the difference between being legalized and being not prohibited?


Saying that it's federally prohibited within the state is dubious, because of the issue of states rights. Constitutional scholars would argue the federal government has little to no ability to control what substances a state wants to prohibit within the state itself. The only way this was worked around to begin with is the stretching of the interstate commerce law, which only applies when crossing state lines.


Only if a court made a ruling on it.


Can these studies be conducted outside the USA, away from DEA and FDA control?


Quoting(emphasis mine):

"In March, Insys launched a multinational study of 190 children to evaluate cannabidiol as a first-line therapy for infantile spasms"

That does seem to be the solution being pursued it seems


Yes, all of the R&D money is about to move to Canada.


Funnily enough when government funding for sex/sexuality research gets constrained - normally during a Republican tenure - researchers move to Canada https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/the-big-b...


Fortunately, the United States doesn't have a monopoly on cannabis research. For instance, Israel and Canada are funding studies.


The organization MAPS is doing fantastic work in this space. MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treating severe PTSD is getting ready for phase 3 trials, the last major step prior to FDA approval. Based on the very strong results in phase 2, the FDA has awarded it the "breakthrough treatment" status. If this passes, it will be an enormous game-changer for society's view on psychedelics. The results so far suggest also that it will be an immense help to the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from PTSD. I believe they are working on approval in Europe as well, but are not as far along.

As for the article: MAPS is also doing work related to expanding marijuana research, but I haven't been following that as much. However, based on the above, I recommend donating if this is something you care about!


"an agency so entrenched in bureaucracy, that the will of the people is far from them" should be the definition of the term "Deep State". Doing BS for so long, they ignore the people.

How people maintain cannabis as schedule I is Vogon levels of incompetence.


At least they will be able to do the studies in Canada in short order.


> In any case, my requests languished until I partnered with Insys Therapeutics and GW Pharmaceuticals

Yay bribery and corruption.

"Work with us and your problems will go away."


I'm always amazed when cannabis is more tightly controller than cocaine — which is also an illicit drug that has legitimate medical uses.


But it's not... the feds will utterly fuck you over for possessing cocaine. Just 5 grams of crack in many states is going to land you in jail for a long time. Maybe you mean for research purposes, but even that I would doubt.

Such a shame because cocaine is a blissful, perfect drug and smoking crack is an especially excellent way to consume cocaine.


Why aren't these studies being performed in other countries with less restrictive laws?


> In March, Insys launched a multinational study of 190 children to evaluate cannabidiol as a first-line therapy for infantile spasms. We are eager to see how well the compound performs when given in the first days and weeks of the condition. If it turns out to be effective, cannabidiol would represent a substantial improvement over current drugs, all of which have serious side effects: One, for example, causes irreversible vision loss in as many as one-third of the children who take it.

Its ok to sell: "a drug that causes irreversible vision loss in as many as one-third of the children who take it"

Its against the law: canabidiol from a plant, or even grow the plant yourself


What drives me crazy is, if you go to a psychiatrist today and lie about having hard time sleeping, they can immediately prescribe you Ambien which not only causes dementia and other neurological problems in long term use, but systematically makes people do absolutely batshit crazy things they'll never remember the next morning. In the US, drug regulations are absolutely ridiculous and have no scientific basis, it is randomly decided by a few individuals and systematically affect the lives of each and every person living in the US, citizen or not. I can't even begin to believe how&why we let things like this happen.


> they can immediately prescribe you Ambien which not only causes dementia and other neurological problems in long term use, but systematically makes people do absolutely batshit crazy things they'll never remember the next morning.

Not only that, the same psychiatrist might be getting kickbacks from the maker of ambien to peddle it to their clients.

>it is randomly decided by a few individuals

It isn't randomly decided. It's systematically decided by drug companies.


It's bizarre. I have been treated for ADHD with stimulants for years and when I walk my psychs office there is Adderall/Vyvanse and Shire Pharmaceutical paraphernalia all over the walls, posters, tote bags, little models of the brain stamped with "Adderall XR".


>I can't even begin to believe how&why we let things like this happen.

$$$.


CBD and THC can easily be monetized for profit so what's the issue?


The issue was that we wanted a new loophole for the 13th amendment. We also really wanted to permanently "deport" Americans who had brown skin.

There's a lot of money in that.


Don’t know why you’re downvoted, since the Controlled Substances Act was meant to disrupt African American and leftist political efforts, according to Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman.

They couldn’t raid black panther meetings for legally possessing guns, but they could for smoking joints and selling drugs.

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/poli...


Competition, as in, ease of home drug creation.


We haven't left the 1920's in terms of using drug law to "clean up" "undesirables".


wasn't this 70s drug law to prevent people from voting agaisnt Nixon? those people would still vote against Trump, so they shouldn't be allowed to


So far I did not have that issue, but I am getting a bit concerned. If that is correct, going to a doctor, despite paying a hefty price, I have to double and sanity check my doctor's prescriptions. I don't want to end up accidentally dealing with terrible side-effects for little gain...

And I can not say I can trust my pharmacist to raise a flag on a dangerous prescription or interference between medication, as I would back home. Perhaps this is a subjective feeling.

P.S. On second thought: I am concerned about a friend who is getting over prescribed addictive medication for chronic back pain (see Vicodin/ Hydrocodone w. paracetamol). I have discussed this with a few family doctors overseas who all agree it is a terrible idea. Yet it is kind of standard in the U.S. Anyone with medical training in the U.S. has experience, thoughts or care to pitch in?


It is true. We had endless conversations about Ambien in Hackersnews, one example here 50 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17591515

I was prescribed Ambien by going to a doctor for insomnia. No tests, no nothing. Sure I legit had insomnia, a pretty bad one at that, but they just asked me my problem I told them I can't sleep, next thing I know I'm prescribed Ambien. This the university hospital one of the best universities in US, not some random rural hospital.

You should never ever use any drug without doing your own research about it. Doesn't matter if #1 MD in the Western World prescribed it. Drug industry is nothing but a game to make 1% of 1% richer.


My other half has a chronic psychiatric condition, after struggling for 2 years we'd found a combo that worked. Prior to that though, we'd had to check drug/drug interactions ourselves because a previous doctor simply didn't, nor did the pharmacist...

Been using Epocrates (the free parts) to check interactions and side effects. Beats digging through the FDA website for it.

One suggestion, NEVER look up common drugs like Advil.


>> One suggestion, NEVER look up common drugs like Advil. Why is that?


Because if there was one instance of it during trial or there was someone that had it while on the medication even unrelated it's probably in there.

So say someone took Advil then had, as a minor example, violent giggling fits completely unrelated. Now violent giggling fits is going to be listed as an adverse effect for Advil because, maybe it caused it?

Now replace violent giggling with fun things like: stroke, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, or whatever other fun things are listed on Advil...

Basically, likely to scare yourself for no reason. But for more serious drugs? Maybe worth some digging.


benzos and amphetamins, easy to get legally as long as you don't try to get thc or some magic forms of amphetamins like crystal.

And when you are an black us citizen, have fun in prison.

It is stupid...


Or opiates, or benzodiazeprines, or amphetamine. The list goes on.


'Consumer protection' makes extremely good political capital.


This shows the derangement of the people in charge.

Why is this? Why this derangement on the subject of cannabis? I've read a fair amount, and every time I've brought it up, I get downvoted to hell. So, I'll ask:

Anyone have a hypothesis on why a large number of our leaders, who happen to be older white men, are insanely against this plant?


No need to hypothesize. The rampup of the drug war under Nixon was largely to attack blacks, hippies (antiwar), and other counterculture figures. [0]

"We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." (John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic policy chief)

In the interim, it became a wedge issue and via "tough on crime", an extension of certain party platforms, (also in that it has effectively become the status quo for some population segments) and I think persists largely as some combination of the above.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...


That doesn't explain why it is banned in most countries around the world that didn't have Nixon nor blacks.


It’s an interesting point. I’d be interested to know the history of cannabis prohibition in Europe and Central America.


[flagged]


I don't feel like you gave the article due diligence; dislike of CNN aside, as you'd see that they are very open about the quote being contested (No surprise, given the sensitivity), but given the fact that Nixon contested pretty much all the things that we DO have on tape of him saying, (Some of which is in this exact vein, e.g. [1]) and that the end result of their policies WAS exactly as the quote describes, I find your disbelief somewhat surprising. (ESPECIALLY given Ehrlichman's role in watergate)

Nonwithstanding, I'm pretty sure the original source was via Dan Baum here [0], but given the preponderance of evidence towards an occams razor interpretation of Nixon's policy and the lack of any meaningful evidence to the contrary, it seems extremely reasonable to accept this as legitimate.

[0]http://www.antoniocasella.eu/archila/DanBaum_2016.pdf

[1]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20... “going after all these Jews. Just find one that is a Jew, will you.”


Drug laws can be selectively enforced to give criminal records to people of color. Then the state can refuse to give people with criminal records the right to vote. There's no immediate gain for a politician to reform these laws (the people affected can't or don't vote), the other legal drugs already have huge lobbies to pay the politician, and the law and order crowd has a sizeable popularity that is hard to budge with any sort of non punitive solution until it affects them directly and personally.


Not sure why you're being downvoted as I think the empiric evidence supports the position that drug laws (and many others) are selectively enforced on the basis of socioeconomic status and race.

Cocaine is a schedule 3 stuff. Cannabis and crack cocaine are schedule 1.


As further suggestive evidence of this, watch the correlation between donors/friends of those same old white guys entering the MJ business, and the rapid "evolution" of the willingness to switch stances on legality.

You can even evaluate this without malice: Some say MJ is dangerous, and some say it's great. The status quo is that it is banned. Changing that creates the risk that it is bad and the change will be blamed on you, but legalizing will not bring you much glory, so you support the status quo until you have sufficient incentive (most likely $$$, but a strong push from the public instead of "meh" would also count).

That said, I find a mix of opportunism and greed to be the most likely explanation.


Further support is the fact that most politicians support punitive action against people with drug possession charges, rather than mandating treatment. There's solid evidence that drug crisis can be solved in the long term by access to treatment, and more evidence that punitive measures increase crime and continue the poverty cycle.

The only reason to support the current drug laws is literally because you want more crime and drug use.


I dug into campaign finance when a single state representstive tabled a bill to allow on-site sales at local breweries (the rep had received >$19,000 from AB-InBev over the past 10 years) and one of the things I noticed was that EVERYONE got pharma money. Lots of it. You can say campaign contributions don’t buy votes til you’re blue in the face, and then I’ll sell you a bridge.

edit: I should clarify that medicinal herbs one can grow oneself scare the profit-hungry pharmaceutical industry, and they will (and do) spend money to keep such plants illegal. There is also money from private prison companies who earn profit on the incarceration of citizens who stand to lose money if marijuana is fully decriminalized (I’m not going to pull a number out of thin air, but I believe it is a majority of inmates who are locked up for victimless drug crimes). State and local police departments love to receive federal grants to keep on fighting the war on drugs. There is so much money and effort against the legalization of a f’ing plant, and from so many sides, that even a well-meaning politician can look at the “evidence” and believe the public, as a whole, wants to keep Mother Nature illegal.


Because, combined with a police state and selective enforcement, its prohibition is an amazing tool for filling prisons with black and brown bodies.


And thanks to the 13th amendment, once found guilty of a crime, are legal to be slaves. Again.


This is fact, so I'm curious why it's being downvoted.

>Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Did I maybe miss a supreme Court case where that bit of it was neutered?


It's probably getting downvoted because they're trying to evoke an emotional reaction by comparing forced labor as part of a prison sentence with literally keeping people as your personal property. If we're going to call any instance of the government forcing you to do a job you don't want "slavery", then here's a list of countries where the majority of the population has been forced into "slavery" without even being found guilty of a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Countries_wit...


Well, yes, I would agree that forced conscription is a form of slavery. Obviously it's not as horrible a situation as say early American black slavery, but slavery nonetheless. I'm happy to be challenged on this.


In what sense is it not equally horrible?

Combine it with these observations:

1) Trials are increasingly rare, most criminals in prison never had one, they made a plea deal

2) The difference between a maximum sentence and a plea deal can be an order of magnitude (2 years instead of 20)

3) Dark skinned people can rationally expect that they won’t receive a fair trial, given bias in police investigations, DA practices, and juries.

... That adds up to a lot of innocent dark skinned people in prison, who quite rationally traded their civic rights for a smaller variability in their risk profile.

I guess what’s “better” about that than chattel slavery is that person had a possibility of release. So instead of 100% chance of incarceration and loss of civil rights, they had only an 80% chance of incarceration. Is that your position?

Personally, that doesn’t feel like a qualitative difference. Seems like the same situation just moved to a different psychic plane. But, interested in your thoughts.


I was talking about forced military conscription, i.e. what Taiwanese and Korean citizens undergo, not the American prison system.

These systems aren't as bad as chattel slavery because there is a strict legal requirement of when they must end (usually within a year), the citizen remains a citizen (albeit a military one as well) and thus still gets due process (outside of military punishments for, say, defecting or pointing a gun at a superior officer), the citizen can own property while doing their service, they get to do whatever they want with their own money, etc etc etc.

I still think they're wrong, for many reasons, but also because I don't believe there should be militaries designed for human-human conflict.


The guilty plea system is pretty much used to intimidate defendants into waiving their right to a fair trial. Far, far, from every person serving time in a prison has been convicted by a jury in a court of law.


> It's probably getting downvoted because they're trying to evoke an emotional reaction by comparing forced labor as part of a prison sentence with literally keeping people as your personal property.

What I stated was a fact. Too bad, that you don't like facts, or that you try to dismiss the fact that it is slavery by comparing it to chattel slavery.

This isnt some bigoted law in some Southern state legislature. This is enshrined as federal constitutional law, and is also why the USA is not a signatory to numerous anti-slave treaties.

> If we're going to call any instance of the government forcing you to do a job you don't want "slavery", then here's a list of countries where the majority of the population has been forced into "slavery" without even being found guilty of a crime.

No, "I" didn't call it slavery. The 13th amendment did. Too bad the constitution isnt enough of a authoritative source. And then, you dismiss it with whataboutism. I live in the USA, and am dscussing USA constitutional law; Im not discussing your whataboutism of countries I dont live in.


You probably serve your (IMO just) argument well by learning to discuss controversial topics with at least some semblance of respect for those who disagree with you.


So I should "respect" those who accept and advocate slavery? No.

We can discuss controversial subjects. Happens quite often. But you're wanting me to respect the fact that people are OK with slavery. Put it this way: I have ethics, and this is beyond the pale.

This "argument" is nothing more than a decorum complaint. Slavery, in all its forms, is Wrong. Anybody who supports slavery is Wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts.

And we fought a war over this very issue, and the 'compromise' was that criminals could be enslaved. Who'da thought that the majority of those who were chattel slaves would end up as "criminals", and back where they started? Its high time we excise that criminals part from the 13th.


Yet, in the same breath, those same people condemn punitive labour camps in communist countries.

You can't really have it both ways. Forced labour in prison creates a colossal conflict of interest for the state, even in a world where the law is just, and is applied fairly. (We don't really live in that world.)


Probably from the people who think those in prison are not slaves, but are "earning their keep."


It's likely less about "earning your keep" and more that you're being punished.


> Did I maybe miss a supreme Court case where that bit of it was neutered?

The Supreme Court does not have the authority to "neuter" parts of the Constitution.


It de facto does. If the government is running off one interpretation of a piece of the Constitution and the supreme Court rules that that interpretation is incorrect, it's been neutered


I feel this way, but apply it to the whole country. A vast majority of people who grew up in the mid to late 90s act like cannabis was created by the devil himself. But why? I get that most people dislike it because it's been illegal all their life, so they look down on it. I like to use Red from that 70s show as a good example. Look how much he hated it, he hated it with his entire being. Why though? It never did anything to him, never affected him in a negative way, why does he have such an ingrained pure hatred for it? > I do not partake of cannabis. This is just a topic that interests me. Now I understand that the hatred for it in modern politics in large comes from a financial perspective. You get into the whole war on drugs, how it's a talking point for potential candidates, how the funding for it is padding pockets, etc. This hatred goes beyond that though, people despised weed way before it become a common symbol of degeneracy.

It's not just cannabis though. This whole ideology can be applied to many topics. Where older people grew up being taught to hate it, while younger generations seem to be more rational and open to understanding that these taboo subjects may not be as bad as society wants you think. Some other topics that fall into this category include abortion, female workers/pay, war.


It's easy to buy into propaganda when you have no first-hand experience with something. Access to information was much more limited back then and censorship was much easier. It's not like most libraries would have a cannabis section in the 60s.

If I were constantly told by a number of authority figures that Argentina was a war-torn shithole with rampant poverty and violence, I'd likely believe it. I've never been there, I don't know anyone from there, and I have no reason to suspect those who I trust are liars.


Because they're fearful and they have support from fearful people who want to punish drug users for no reason. Moral panics are some of the worst things in existence. Leads to absolute garbage like the Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

I'm astounded that psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD are all scheduled so harshly.


I would suspect you get downvoted because you imply that it's mostly "older white men" who are deranged. Is Rodrigo Duterte a white man? Is Prayut Chan-o-cha a white man? In fact, it seems that most of the countries where it's legal in one form or another are lead by white men. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis


There are several reasons, and this list is far from complete:

Hemp threatened the cotton industry.

Cannabis was more usual among Mexican immigrant workers, which is why they renamed it to something more Mexican sounding.

It was a convenient way of breaking up the hippie movement and avoiding Vietnam war protests.

It has many medicinal uses and less side effects than the artificial crap we call medicine these days.

It scrambles the programming, people start asking themselves the wrong questions when using it.

It allows the government to conduct a war against its own people, and discriminate freely; while claiming to protect.

And on it goes...

States have managed to foment different levels of social stigma.

In Sweden, where I was born; you might as well do crack cocaine in most peoples eyes.


Personally I'm anti drug use because of how many friends and family members I've seen turn their lives to shit after starting weed etc. I know there's a lot of fine users but so many of my friends turned to weed to cope and then from there went onto harder stuff like crack/cocaine. And really, I don't support people altering their mind states through the use of recreational drugs, alcohol included. It saddens me to see that no one can see any reason against drug use besides "it locks up black people in prison" because for me at least, that has nothing to do with marijuana legislation at all.


Can we not agree, though, that scare tactics around victimless crimes (in the sense that the victim is also the perpetrator) are demonstrably ineffectual? Abstinence-only sex education, for example, correlates positively with teen pregnancy rates [1], whereas opioid overdose education is shown to decrease opioid death rates [2].

Without getting into the moral argument of whether or not people should be able to choose to alter their mental state through drugs (are we cool with coffee as well?), it seems clear to me that the best policy is one of education and harm reduction, not FUD and prohibition.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/


This article and the associated discussion thread you're contributing to here has zero to do with recreational use. Is this the core issue? People can't separate the two? Do people generally not realize that because of how it's scheduled there is no possibility for medical use and that this is starting to look like a really bad thing given the circumstances?


Can you understand the perspective from other people who have literally never seen anyone move on from weed to crack cocaine?

Have you ever asked yourself if prohibition was the best way to combat drug problems?

I would suggest reading the book "Rise of the warrior cop" and then ask yourself if you still support prohibition.


I’m with you, and I think this is an important part of the discussion so I hope people will make space for it. Pot, alcohol, even mushrooms can be dangerous psychologically. Society must address this.

However I don’t think this has any bearing on legalization. Whether something should be illegal is a different question than whether it is harmful.

If prohibition, in practice, will cause intolerable side effects, then it’s not a just policy. Even if we agree that the prohibited behavior is destructive.

It’s also not universally true that prohibition even decreases the prohibited behavior. Especially with teenagers it can sometimes have the opposite effect.

I am against abortion bans, not because I think abortion is harmless, but because I think prohibition has terrible effects.

Lastly, there are positive effects of a general culture of freedom. Freedom to make mistakes, not just freedom within a set of formally approved activities. We are able as a group to more effectively explore the space of safe activities if we allow personal exploration of unsafe activities to a degree.

This is why some people advocate not for prohibition of all harmful activities, but prohibition only of those that harm non-consensual participants. It’s illegal to hit your domestic partner. It’s legal to hit your sparring partner at the gym. That’s not because hitting is harmless (it’s not). It’s because many of us think the law is best suited to dampen harmful non-consensual activities, while other means (ministry, fellowship, etc) are more effective means to dampen consensual harmful activity.


I'm very pro weed, and as such have had a lot of conversations with non-smokers about its benefits. What I've come to realize is that a lot of more conservative people are really against any mind altering drug. Yes it's hypocritical that booze isn't classified as "mind altering" and is fully accepted.

If I'm totally honest with myself I have to appreciate where they are coming from to a degree. I in no way think that marijuana is bad and I think it's actually extremely beneficial in many ways, but it is, for lack of a better word: strong.

Getting drunk can make you act like an idiot and be life threatening but it doesn't really change how you think, it just sort of shuts down pieces of your brain. Weed in some sense changes who you are. I think this effect is what a lot of people are afraid of.

So in the end I don't think "older white men" are actually being racist (intentionally) but they are just conservatives who are really uncomfortable altering their state of consciousness. I don't agree with it, but I think it's often a good faith argument on their part.


Yeah, sometimes I've been wondering if there's a natural unconscious resistance or barrier in ourselves or in the ego programming, that is averse or even hostile to loosening up or the very idea of there being something beyond it that weed and plenty other drugs may come to show, because even when confronted with scientific studies and evidence to the contrary they can often double down or divert the conversation to some argument error or non sequiturs or nonsensical statements.

No one should be forced to do drugs of any kind but what is it with this 'baseline hostility' towards altered states?


Its criminalization is seen by conservatives as fighting back against what the counter-culture of the 60s unleashed.

When the basis of objection is largely emotional facts aren't all that helpful.


Supporting the war on drugs because you need to differentiate yourself from the left is like supporting the patriot act because you hate terrorists. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. Neither are legislation that stand on it's own merit once you look at it with the benefit of hindsight.

That said, the "counter culture" gave us the war on drugs, gun control, probably a couple other curtailments of personal freedom that I'm forgetting, they reduced public support for the civil rights movements of the time and provided an excuse for the three letter agencies to greatly increase their amount of domestic surveillance. In return we got out of 'nam a year, maybe two, earlier. I don't see why people romanticize the culture shifts of the 1960s. Their intentions were good but their methods flawed and their results worse.


In addition to blatant racism, I suspect much of it is due to the potential for cultural and spiritual revolution should marijuana (or psychedelics in general) become legal. We can look to the 60's for an example of what can happen when mind-altering substances become widely used recreationally. There were a lot of other factors at play then, but the growth of counterculture and subsequent pushback was the origin of many of today's political battles. I can see why conservatives are afraid of that rapid change - it will be incredibly disruptive to the established order. (I disagree with their fears).


Michael Pollan's "How To Change Your Mind" delves into this in some depth.

As someone who has found some actual relief from previously crippling anxiety using cannabidiol, I'm really hoping to see progress on this front. It's all upwards from here for me.


Ganja cures the Babylon mind sickness.


Curious about what you mean by that.



There are a lot of conspiracy theories in the replies to you, but IMO it is yet another example of the weird outcomes generated by an incredibly complex system which is heavily influenced by starting conditions and path dependency.


[flagged]


I think you're right, to a point. Let's not forget that we're talking about a country that amended its constitution to outlaw alcohol, and this state of governmental failure remained in place for over a decade. So there's more going on here than just preferring drugs that bolster amoral decision making.


Interesting! This is the same Insys that is currently under investigation for paying kick-backs to doctors to prescribe fentanyl![1]

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/nyregion/fentanyl-subsys-...


At worst it should be states' rights issue. It took a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, the product of processed plants. The federal government, as per the constitution, has no right to impose such bans on the people.


I'm sure the sale of marijuana for use in the study would probably run afoul of the good old commerce clause that lets the federal government regulate sale of just about everything.


Basically because of the atrocity that was Wickard .v. Filburn, 317 US 111, 1942, if interested.


A society's diet dictates its form. We are to consume ethanol, caffeine, nicotine, and sugar, for those will create a manipulatable non-questionning society.


[deleted]


Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Sorry, you're right. I'd delete but it looks like HN won't allow me to do so now.


I'll delete it for you and detach it from the GP.


Thank you!


Great read thanks for the insight DR




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