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This Monday, the Drug Policy Alliance and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies released a report titled "The DEA: Four Decades of Impeding and Rejecting Science." Using case studies from 1972 to the present, the report argues the ways the US Drug Enforcement Administration has suppressed research on the positive benefits of marijuana for medical use.
The crux of the report is this: The DEA has worked to paint marijuana into an inescapable corner by both repeatedly (and falsely) stating that marijuana has no proven medical use and by systematically impeding clinical research that would prove such medical benefit. This refusal to either acknowledge or study the drug allows it to continue being classified as a Schedule I drug, the most heavily regulated illegal substance.
From the story:
"It's like giving the Highway Patrol the ability to set speed limits," Sean Dunagan, a former DEA senior intelligence research specialist, told VICE News. Dunagan, a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said DEA culture is vehemently anti-drug and "stuck in the 1980's rhetoric" of the war on drugs.
"The DEA is never going to approach scheduling decisions on the basis of science," said Dunagan. "It's necessarily skewed in one direction."
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @05:59PM
Follow the money. How much proof exists as to the involvement in the paper, lumber, cotton etc industries efforts to completely remove hemp products from the competitive field? How much of the early growth in its use was related to these efforts, if only in a response similar to the prohibition response post making it illegal? How much profit and for who in its control? How much power does it generate for the Feds?
LSD gained wide use after numerous government funded and sometimes run research, government was interested in its uses as a mind control drug. The exploits of some of the test subjects might prove interesting to many.
Cocaine was(is?) used to fund CIA black ops, mostly off the record ones of course.
Just the tip of the iceberg.
(Score: 2) by AsteroidMining on Monday June 16 2014, @06:18PM
Sure it was. The hippies and the student protestors smoked marijuana, and Ronald Reagan built his political career around bashing hippies and student protestors.
That government mandated drug-tests could be used to funnel money to politically well-connected conservative "entrepreneurs" was just a nice bonus.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @06:54PM
The "Marihuana(sic) Act" was from 1937 and the AMA (American Medical Association) was on record as objecting to its creation and passage at the time. The efforts to ban it were funded by Randolph Hearst, the DuPonts and others. Hearst also used his publishing empire to attack the "demon weed". The "hippies" were mostly not even born yet (heck some of their parents weren't out of diapers yet even) and Reagan still hadn't made a movie yet, much less got into politics.
Of course you can argue that those events in part helped "set the stage" for such targets of opportunity. The major reason for the modifications to the education system came from the fear produced in the government by the "rebellious hippies" led by those who had learned too well the lies offered for their actions by the government regarding Vietnam, South America and elsewhere.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday June 17 2014, @05:21AM
All true. As well there were government agencies (G-men) who had had a taste of power during prohibition and were happy to get it back.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Monday June 16 2014, @07:54PM
Reagan didn't start it, the original "war on drugs" was Nixon's. His was the administration that hated college students and hippies and demonstrators; I remember no demonstrations at all during Reagan's administration but they were almost daily from Johnson through Nixon. Pot became illegal in the 1930s (look up Harry Anslinger" on wikipedia).
Reagan's "war on drugs" was because he wanted to finance a war that Congress didn't want financed, so (as rumor had it at the time) he cracked down on pot and had the CIA import coke. It worked. Every time I wanted pot, the answer was "it's really dry, man. Want some coke?"
You can blame Reagan on the cocaine epidemic, freebasing, and the invention of crack.
I don't know about the eighties, but they couldn't detect pot in the seventies. You can blame the crack epidemic partly on drug testing; the cheap tests employers give can only detect cocaine for three days, but pot shows up for a month. I knew people personally who substituted crack for pot when they were looking for work, only to ruin their lives and become homeless. That shit's nasty. But the government lied about pot, why should anybody believe them about crack?
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