[cwmoo740]

The MDMA scheduling decision should have put any doubts about the role of the DEA to bed back in the 80s. For those unfamiliar with the history, MDMA was used by hundreds of therapists for treating patients in the 80s. Unfortunately it also led to abuse when people realized how fun it was and that they could legally mail order it in bulk. It led to too much bad press when teenagers overdosed, so the DEA stepped in.

The DEA held a hearing for the scheduling decision, and their argument for schedule 1 was that it had no medical value because no pharmaceutical company had applied for an FDA license for it. The judge ruled that MDMA didn't meet a single criteria for schedule 1 status, and the argument about FDA licensing was secondary to whether or not the medical community at large thought it was useful.

Despite this ruling, the DEA unilaterally made it schedule 1. They were sued by a Harvard psychiatrist, and the DEA lost again, with the court ruling that the drug only met the standard for schedule 3. Again, the DEA summarily dismissed the court's ruling and rescheduled it as schedule 1.

The crux of the issue that this whole process danced around was that MDMA's patent had expired, and no pharmaceutical company was going to take on the FDA costs to make a drug that was dirt cheap, easy to manufacture, and should only be used at most five times throughout a patient's life. Especially when the alternatives (Prozac and SSRIs) were making a billion dollars plus annually.

Veterans in the US have a nickname for PTSD: Paid Till Suicide or Death. Right now drug companies are treating the VA as a huge cash cow and are dumping vast quantities of opiates and in-patent SSRIs on it, when there is a far more effective treatment that is extremely cheap. It's a multi billion dollar scam that's killing people, and the DEA is purposefully helping them maintain this charade.

[mighty_atomic_c]

Thank goodness for MAPS.

They're working to get MDMA therapy out to those veterans suffering from PTSD.