[Animats]

The DEA is now looking into moving marijuana off schedule I. That would make it a regular prescription drug, with regular prescriptions, distribution through pharmacies, and insurance coverage. If that happens, the whole "dispensary" business will collapse.

[millstone]

In California (and in Colorado before legalization) dispensary customers are overwhelmingly recreational users, given recommendation letters from "specialists" who issue them with no medical exam. Their "demonstrated medical needs" would never pass muster with a, say, Kaiser doctor.

The dispensary business won't collapse because they are not competing with pharmacies. Though it will be fun to watch the insurance companies push back when pot is prescribed for whiplash, colorblindness, and genital herpes.

[theseatoms]

> Though it will be fun to watch the insurance companies push back when pot is prescribed for whiplash, colorblindness, and genital herpes.

Luckily, the price will be so low, even after-tax, that you won't need insurance to fund your cannabis consumption.

[dominotw]

>Though it will be fun to watch the insurance companies push back when pot is prescribed for whiplash, colorblindness, and genital herpes.

Why do doctors face no backlash for prescribing painkillers willy nilly. Americans use legal painkillers more than any other country in the world.

[dinkumthinkum]

I don't think that's true in the real world. It's more complicated. First of all, I get that for a certain minority of users, it is very much seen as a "medicine" but for the majority it is tongue in cheek game and the dispensaries use all sorts of medical language but at the same time treating it as some sort of fine wine. Normally pharmacists don't ask "Would you like the OG Azithromycin or the Sour Diesel version?"

It is very much a recreational users "drug," whatever you want call it, first and therefore engenders many characteristics of its sales.

A normal pharmacist is not going to walk the consumer through all the different kinds of "highs" the "patient" can get from different variations of Vicodin the way a dispensary worker would with canabis.

As well, I doubt CVS will start hanging "420" and Bob Marley posters all over the place or provide the kind "canabis experience" that consumers will want, for various, which will continue to be served by the dispensaries.

There are many strains that are cultivated for improving recreational experiences, I don't see Walgreens catering to this. So, I think the dispensaries will continue to exist in a significant way, but sure some of their business will be taken away but perhaps because of other effects the market for dispensaries will be expanded.

[jkaunisv1]

You're mostly right, but there are enough differences between strains of cannabis that while not quite the same, it's more like a doctor talking over whether Lorazepam or Xanax would be better for you. Dispensaries do probably take it too far, but I haven't been to any.

Even for those who use "recreationally", there are different goals. Some people use it to sit on the couch and watch netflix. Some use it to clean their bathrooms. Some use it while snowboarding or rock climbing. A lot of people use it to self-medicate anxiety and other issues. And different strains can be better for each of those.

As much as there may be a difference in flavour for wines, they all get you drunk the same way. Not so with cannabis.

[Archio]

I don't know the legal specifics of this, but is that actually true? It is schedule 1 right now, which means it federally has no medical use, yet there are states that successfully empowered themselves to (1) legalize for recreational use, e.g. CO and (2) legalize for medical use from dispensaries, e.g. CA.

How would a reduced federal scheduling level for cannabis also reduce the state's power?

[auntienomen]

It's very difficult to do clinical research on schedule 1 drugs. You need a DEA license, and FDA approval. Lots of hoop jumping, lots of opportunity for prohibitionists to forbid the research.

Moving marijuana to schedule 2 will allow scientists to make honest assessments of its benefits and harms.

[refurb]

Off schedule 1, but to where? If it ends up on schedule 2, it will still be very tightly controlled, just like narcotic painkillers.

[wavefunction]

Have you considered that they could de-schedule it altogether? Unlikely, but about as likely as killing a nascent gold-mine in business revenues, employment and tax receipts. Pandora's Box is already open and while Big Business may want to cut everyone else out and monopolize cannabis revenues, it's not going to happen.