CPEAR “Congressional Action Needed On Cannabis Descheduling”
Just in case you needed more opinion on cannabis re-scheduling!!!
CPEAR Leadership: “Congressional Action Needed on Cannabis Descheduling”
Washington D.C. –Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) advocating for a reclassification of cannabis as a Schedule III substance under the Controlled Substances Act. Cannabis is currently considered a Schedule I substance, labeling it a high risk for the public.The DEA has reviewed the letter and the Biden Administration will now begin the review of the substance.
“Andrew Freedman, executive director of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation, said he expects the change would actually do very little to change how marijuana is treated in criminal cases for the average person. That’s because such prosecutions tied to marijuana possession are mostly at the state level.”
“The much bigger impact, Freedman said, would likely be economically. By reclassifying the drug, cannabis would no longer be subject to an IRS rule that specifically prohibits tax write-offs for businesses ‘trafficking’ controlled substances. According to the National Cannabis Industry Association, cannabis pay tax rates as much as 70%.”
“’Listen, anytime that there’s any progress on cannabis in the United States over the last 100 years — it’s a big, huge momentous day,’ he said. And this announcement by a federal agency said ’yeah, we were not treating this rationally.”
“‘There’s a lot more the federal government needs to be stepping in on and this is not any of that,’ he said.”
“There’s a recognition from the federal government here that they have treated cannabis in a way that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, especially when you bring it into comparison with a lot of other substances. But also this particular mechanism of how it’s changing policy doesn’t really impact the way people are actually using cannabis.”
“If HHS simply descheduled it right now, there’d be no regulatory system for it. There’d be no rules of the road…”
“All of that can’t happen unless there’s congressional action on it. To have an impact on state-regulated markets today, it would really take an act of Congress.”
