2/16/2012 – Activists are preparing to gather at the Federal building in Trenton today to destroy a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ruling as part of a national medical marijuana protest. Members of NORML-NJ and The Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey will shred a copy of The Federal Register Vol. 76 No.131 dated July 8, 2011. The document contains the DEA’s most recent denial of a petition to reschedule marijuana.
Thursday’s protest is organized by Americans for Safe Access and is taking place in cities across the country. Portland, Maine is another East Coast city participating in the “Rally for Safe Access.”
The Schedule I status under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 is the reason that marijuana is prohibited. Schedule I drugs are described as having “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States;” and lack “accepted safety for use under medical supervision;” and, have “a high potential for abuse.”
In the past 40 years voluminous criminal code has since been created at the federal and state level to enforce the Schedule I prohibition of cannabis. Suffering the worst part of this continued effort are seriously ill Americans. They live in fear of losing their lives not just to their disease, but to prison because they find relief from a medication that remains illegal.
Advocacy groups including NORML and MAPS petitioned the DEA for many years seeking to move cannabis to another schedule. The most recent denial last summer culminated a process that the DEA under several presidents, obfuscated for more than a decade.
There are two important factors in the re-scheduling debate. The first is a 1972 report entitled “Marijuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding.” Commissioned by President Nixon and Congress it was crafted by former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer who lead a group that spent almost two years on the issue. Their final recommendation was that cannabis should not be regulated under the CSA or prohibited with criminal laws.
“The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only ‘with the greatest reluctance.”
The second important factor is a ruling from an Administrative Law Judge within the DEA. In 1986 Francis L. Young said that “Marijuana is one of “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. (T)he provisions of the (Controlled Substances) Act permit and require the transfer of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II.”
In ’72 and again in ’86 the Executive Branch tossed aside serious and well-thought recommendations about cannabis policy. Instead of considering solid information millions of Americans have been arrested, trillions of tax dollars spent and untold lives lost or ruined.
Modern science that investigates the natural plant and its component cannabinoids continues to re-verify the tremendous medical benefits of cannabis. The reality is that marijuana is used as a medicine every day by millions of seriously ill Americans – legal or not. That’s why medical marijuana activists say the DEA ruling is good for nothing but shredding and recycling.
More on the ASA rally locations: http://americansforsafeaccess.org/article.php?id=7062
More the CMMNJ Trenton action: http://cmmnj.blogspot.com
Read more at Freedomisgreen.com
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- New Jersey MS Patient Appeals Marijuana Cultivation to State Supreme Court
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- Town in Maine Cuts Public Housing for Medical Marijuana Patients
- NY and CT Move Closer to Jersey-style Medical Marijuana
- New Jersey Still Working on Medical Marijuana Regulations
- New Jersey Patients Say Medical Marijuana Regulations Still Need Work
- Maine Gov LePage Signs Medical Marijuana Privacy Law
- PA Medical Marijuana Bill Named After Gov Shafer
Maryjane’s Corner
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Chris Goldstein is a respected marijuana reform advocate. As a writer and radio broadcaster he has been covering cannabis news for over a decade. Questions? chris@freedomisgreen.com
We as Americans need to come together and tell the Goverment that we the people are supposed to be in charge and that if alcohol and prescription drugs such as Oxycotton are legal then marijuana with with its non physical addictive properties and is even less addictive then Ciggerettes. IDK we need to form a mass protest and march to DC! There is no way that its alright for Ciggerettes and alcohol are legal and ruing lives but weed that doesn’t have those effects is not. its obserd and what ever happened to freedom not in this country is the govement telling me what I can smoke and what I Cant smoke is that a good example of freedom also to be homeless and they tell you cant go in the woods and build a shack and live or tell you cant hunt to eat unless you pay them for a licence first there is no freedom no more none the goverment controls everything but were the ones supposed to control the goverment when more than half the population tells the goverment that they want them to legalize a natural edible plant that GOD made and said was good and they don’t it just wrong!!!
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Thank you for working so tirelessly to get the truth out. I will pray that God gives you the strength and endurance of all creation. We just need to remove all restrictions from the wonderful plant God have us. It’s ours for healing and relaxation and enlightenment!
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please grow up. Leave the sick alone. Go to jail for growing a plant? Completely absurd. Wait till you get cancer and need the weed. I don’t smoke but some day i may HAVE to. We all may need it. Let’s get it together.
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