I don't disagree that this is good for those involved or affected.
However, nothing stops the same from happening to someone tomorrow. The past several administrations have been relying too heavily on executive fiat for the optics.
The DEA needs to reschedule it. Anything else is at best a band-aid, if not simple lip service to buy votes.
Calling it “for optics” is downplaying the severity of the situation. The reason presidents rely so much on executive fiat is because our actual legislative system has paralyzed itself with partisan politics, gerrymandering, and the filibuster.
Obviously it’s intentional that it’s hard to pass things, and legitimately controversial things should be difficult to pass (and shouldn’t happen by executive fiat), but there are 2nd and 3rd order interests overriding what should be the 1st order interest of effective legislation.
Among these 2nd/3rd order interests: not looking bad to your party, making the other party look bad to their constituents, not upsetting some specific demagogues, not losing personal or party power at all costs, winning dunks in social media, looking good for the camera, ensuring that no third party could emerge, ensuring that if the other party gains power that they are incapable of exercising it, etc
The problem with blaming Congress is that the harms could be easily mitigated by the DEA changing the scheduling, which was my point.
Rumor has it that is in the works, but the fact that it has taken so long starts and ends with the executive office.
That said, Congress decriminalizing it entirely is definitely something that is going to take too long, and will also be entirely the fault of Congress.
DEA rescheduling would be the "executive fiat" and is more undo-able than pardons.
The DEA is entirely under the control of the executive. So if you want a more permanent solution, the only one is legislative, and that is extremely unlikely to happen even if there were extremely broad public support.
If we can get 2/3 of the state legislatures to agree, and 3/4 of them to ratify we can amend the constitution without Congress via a Constitutional Convention.
Still long odds but we technically don't HAVE to do it with Congress.
The DEA needs to have this authority rescinded. They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.
It's the federal version of the Siebert strategy and it's completely injust.
> They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.
If that's their logic then someone there can't do math. Between fentanyl, other opioids, and meth they have plenty to do.
Meth is historically misclassified, too. Why are we drawing the line at marijuana?
If we lower the scheduling of opioids to Schedule IV, fentanyl usage in the United States would drop almost entirely within a month. Importing clean prescription drugs from other countries would have low enough risk that the reward would be easily met. Odds are, it would also undercut wider organized drug crime.
You may find this article in The Economist worth a read:
First, I don't draw the line at marijuana. Notice how many drugs I didn't list there.
Second, stepping down from fent to heroin, which I think is what you're implying, is not going to happen that fast and frankly the way you phrased this whitewashes an entire series of events that happened that gave fentanyl the dominance that it has as a street drug; the prescription pill to fentanyl pipeline is one built from a cost and strength. For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.
The scheduling of the drug is irrelevant to the problem that there are and will be people who illegally manufacture and sell meth and fent. The DEA has plenty of those people to go after, even if we legalize and regulate every drug today. Why? Cost. The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.
OP is technically incorrect that rescheduling alone would solve the fentanyl problem, but not for the reasons you state.
> For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.
Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin because of supply-side constraints: specifically, fentanyl is produced in larger quantities for pharmaceutical purposes, and the illegal markets are structured in a way that promotes the distribution of fentanyl over the distribution of heroin. However, that does not mean that fentanyl is inherently cheaper in an abstract sense. If legal restrictions were lifted, both fentanyl and heroin would be dramatically cheaper than either one is today.
This is, incidentally, another argument in favor of maintenance programs. Almost all of the indirect harms associated with illicit drug use, and many of the direct ones, are a consequence of the legal status and the expense (both financial and nonfinancial) associated with them.
Clinical trials present overwhelming evidence that, when provided with a low-cost, pharmaceutical grade supply of heroin, users are able to hold down stable jobs, maintain permanenent housing, etc., all things that they previously struggled with due to having to spend so much time, effort, and money in order to address what is fundamentally a medical issue for them.
> The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.
This is more or less the "gateway drug" theory, and it's simply incorrect. There is no "pipeline" of stimulants, and to the extent that one can even be argued to exist, methamphetamine is not the "final stop" in one.
"Gateway drug theory" has to do with going from one class of drugs to another. That is not what I described. I described usage within a single class of drugs that has to do with chemically addictive properties, strength, and cost dictating the choice of the next drug.
I can see your argument about cost, but I think it ignores that, for instance, tranq is now being used in combination with fent. The reason for that isn't cost, it's entirely strength and chemically addictive properties. I think ignoring those kind of factors falls squarely outside of harm reduction. Where your argument with cost runs foul is in states like California where the legalization and subsequent regulation of the drug shot it's cost up. I'd argue marijuana probably doesn't need that kind of regulation, but chemically addictive substances I think do.
I think you are mischaracterizing the emergence of tranq.
"Xylazine proliferated as a response to the shorter fentanyl highs, with drug sellers using it to extend the high & mimic a traditional heroin experience."
The optics, for a modern democratic republic, aren’t even that fantastic: pardons and proclamations are the acts of Kings. Democracies change laws through debate, legislation, and the voting by the representatives of the people.
I hope this pardon doesn’t dilute the will for more substantive drug policy reform.
High officials have pardon power in a great many democratic republics. And when the country has a parliamentary system and government is led by the prime minister, sometimes pardon power rests with the president whose position is seen as aloof from all the debate and strife in parliament.
The problem is that the US has difficulty operating as a modern democracy in general.
Yeah sure, I agree with you that proclamations and executive orders are inherently vulnerable to the whims of whomever happens to hold the office and have no place in a democracy.
But the legislative branch, as it currently operates, is not much different. In practice it results in huge pendulum swings and deadlocks, making every 2 years (because midterms) a nail biting event for the populous because hard fought rights and legislation can be undone in the blink of an eye.
As someone who grew up in a coalition country, it’s saddening to see how people around me here in the US are constantly in a state of anxiety, filled with despair like someone who’s awaiting the return of an abusive spouse from work, wondering what will happen this time.
If we somehow could get rid of the FPTP system in our legislative system, then we can rid ourselves from the two party system.
Not only will this significantly lessen things like gerrymandering, and the power of lobbying, but it would force parties to form a coalition because it’s less likely that one single party holds the majority of seats.
Parties would have to actually debate each other and try to convince each other, make concessions on all sides, in order to form a coalition.
The result of this is a more steady course in government policy, with sweeping pendulum swings being rarer and the changes being made being more nuanced.
Subsequently the citizenry doesn’t have to be on high alert 24/7 and the country can function more like a modern democracy.
And next thing in the agenda would be judicial reform.
Until then, both the legislative branch and the executive branch will subject us to whims and other pendulum swings.
Congress set the initial scheduling of some drugs, and set a process for updating the schedules within the executive branch going forward, with the DEA (in statute, the Attorney-General, but in practice within Justice its the DEA doing the main work) playing the key role (HHS in statute -- via the FDA in practice-- plays a mandatory role in advance of the decision, which is controlling in the case of a currently non-controlled drug that HHS recommends not controlling, but advisory in, I believe, all other cases.)
I don't know about the power of appointment there and it's limitations. Regardless, that's still an influence move. It's either trying to influence the existing people in power via threat of unemployment, or influencing potential replacements with a promise of employment.
I don't support a train barreling toward derailment just because I prefer the view from a moving train.
If there is a single negative consequence from this pardon, some sort of Willy Horton moment for Biden, it will definitely derail the path to decriminalization and strengthen the resolve of the opposition.
I support pardons for miscarriages of the procedures of justice, not for freeing incarcerated people for actions that are still considered crimes. I guess "hooray, our team won today" is what I am supposed to be saying; time will show us the good or bad of having chosen the shortcut.
I believe the Biden administrations has gotten the ball rolling in getting the DEA to start the process of investigating it for rescheduling. Along with what looks like a few congress people, Cortez and Gaetz? I could be wrong on that. Granted, if so, the process should get sped up. [1]
But ideally we have the solution on two fronts. The DEA should still reschedule it. But Congress should also seriously implement a law decriminalizing it.
Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side? A bit unaware in terms of US politics, but up here since legalization, life is exactly as it was before — people who smoked just continue to smoke but legally, people who don’t… don’t.
> Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side?
The House doesn't have to pass it, resecheduling is an executive action. (Congress could act to block it by legislation, and there is a streamlined process for doing that for reg changes in the Congressional Review Act but, it would take both Houses and -- since presumably the President will support his own administration's regulation -- sufficient supermajorities to overcome a veto.)
The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen. HHS (one federal agency) has already recommended it to DEA (another federal agency), which has the final say unless Congress were to affirmatively intervene.
With that said, they aren’t proposing to grant federal legality to the state-legal recreational marijuana market. They are planning to reclassify it from Schedule I (no recognized medical use) to Schedule III (the same category as anabolic steroids or testosterone and less restricted than Adderall), so the proposed federally legal way to get it would need a prescription and dispensing by a pharmacy or doctor.
One thing the President might be able to do is to remove legally-sourced marijuana use as a disqualification for holding a US security clearance. It is also disqualifying for other Federal background checks related to buying handguns. Maybe the change from Schedule I to Schedule III would do this automatically.
"One thing the President might be able to do is to remove legally-sourced marijuana use as a disqualification for holding a US security clearance."
Just to clarify, current use of marijuana is a disqualification for a security clearance. Past use of marijuana is not a disqualifier. When I was a younger man I used marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine and MDMA. Several of them very frequently. I disclosed all of this prior use and was able to get multiple security clearances through the years.
I no longer have nor will in the future have a security clearance so I now enjoy my legal weed.
> The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen.
The entire theme of this thread is "nothing stops the same from happening tomorrow". One president can order the DEA to reschedule it, and then the next can undo that work just as easily. We need a law, not an executive fiat. Most of the country is in favor of legalization, including most republican voters, so you'd think it would be easy to get the house on board, had it not been co-opted by right-wing extremists.
Under current federal law the President doesn't have the authority to simply order rescheduling. There is a process that must be followed and substantial changes to that process would require an Act of Congress.
The house is incapable of passing the most basic of funding for national security to let Ukraine win the war, let alone something even slightly controversial
Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress. The executive branch could always just stop enforcing the laws passed by the legislative branch, but I thought we wanted less executive overreach.
> Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress.
Marijuana can be rescheduled without an act of Congress; what is on the table is not full legalization (which, AFAIK, could also be done within the executive, because IIRC drugs can be descheduled by the same process for rescheduling) but rescheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III.
And by "on the table", I mean the first step -- FDA recommendation to DEA -- has already been done.
However, nothing stops the same from happening to someone tomorrow. The past several administrations have been relying too heavily on executive fiat for the optics.
The DEA needs to reschedule it. Anything else is at best a band-aid, if not simple lip service to buy votes.