[oarabbus_]

The DEA Scheduling system is not fact-based and needs to be completely redone. In fact, the categorizations are provably false e.g. PCP is schedule II, Cocaine is schedule III, Xanax is Schedule IV etc, while Marijuana and Psilocybin (mushrooms) are Schedule I.

Yes that's right, according to the federal government, marijuana and mushrooms are more harmful, more addictive, and have less medical use than PCP, Cocaine, or Xanax.

[arcticbull]

PCP was a general anesthetic, cocaine is still a local anesthetic used humorously enough for rhinoplasty [1] (and eye surgery if I’m not mistaken) and Xanax is an antidepressant so by that strict measure there’s some logic.

With that in mind it’s a completely asinine system and should be thrown out. It’s such an utter waste of time when Portugal’s policy of decriminalizing everything a decade and a half ago showed massive public benefit and no increase in drug use. [2]

Nothing about the war on drugs is “fact based.” This whole conversation is about re-shuffling the deck chairs when we should be getting off the Titanic.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9935273/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

[0x8BADF00D]

Xanax is not an antidepressant, it is a sedative-hypnotic.

[loeg]

Ostensibly, it's foremost an anxiolytic.

[loeg]

Cocaine is Schedule II, actually. While it can be used as a topical anesthetic, I don't think it is especially common anymore.

Xanax has significant medical use supported by actual studies. (Yes, it's kind of a problem that the Federal government essentially blocks studies of many substances.) There's not a lot of real distinction between schedules III-V other than "less potential for abuse than the last one" (per DEA, not any science). Schedule II is nominally "high potential for abuse," like Schedule I.

> The DEA Scheduling system is not fact-based and needs to be completely redone.

Yes, current scheduling is absurd and not based in evidence.

I don't really agree with the policy that drugs must have medical value to be legal (which is enshrined in the distinction between Schedule I and II as they are today); it's certainly hard to reconcile with the legal status of (potable) alcohol or tobacco, which have more or less negative medical value.

[claudiawerner]

This makes even less sense to me (as someone who knows only very little about drugs other than trying weed a couple of times), but doesn't cannabis also have medical use, and further have a lower potential for abuse, at least along the addictiveness axis?

[loeg]

> doesn't cannabis also have medical use?

There isn't much evidence for medical use of cannabis and what there is is super weak. That's not to say it won't be proven effective in time, just that the research isn't definitive.

> and further have a lower potential for abuse, at least along the addictiveness axis?

I am not super well versed on cannabis abuse/addictiveness research but anecdotally, sure; as far as I know, it's relatively nonaddictive and harm of regular high-dose use is pretty mild.

[GordonS]

This is not confined to the DEA, or the USA. Drug policy in many countries is based on fear-mongering and policitcal point-scoring.

Case in point, the tabloid press in the UK brands anyone that uses any illicit drug a "junkie"; another, UK politicians are unlikely to legalise recreational use of anything beyond caffeine, alcohol and nicotine in our lifetimes.

Humans have used psychoactive drugs since the beginning of time, and the long, damaging and fruitless "war on drugs" demonstrates that we still and always will - surely it's time for a different stance on drugs?