In 1970 marijuana became
labeled as a Schedule
1 drug.(Source)
In 1988 Francis L Young was the first judge to rule that marijuana
should not have this classification. His ruling is consistent to the
same effort in 2015
to reform marijuana laws.
In 1972 NORML petitioned the
DEA on the ruling of marijuana as a schedule 1 drug. They requested
it be reclassified as a schedule 2 drug. Their goal was to allow
doctors to prescribe marijuana for therapeutic purposes. The Drug
Enforcement Agency then began to stall for fourteen years before
reluctantly holding public hearings.
Francis L. Young was one of
the two DEA administrative judges chosen to rule on the public
hearings. Young was hand picked as a judge for his conservative
viewpoint. The judgment was based on 15 days of reviewing hundreds of
documents from the DEA/NIDA against the benefits of marijuana. His
conclusions came from the research found in the medical community
using marijuana for treatments. He stated:
"Marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically
active substances known to man...Marijuana has been accepted as
capable of relieving distress of great numbers of very ill people,
and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be
unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand
between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light
of the evidence in this record... The Administrator transfer
marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II, to make it available as a
legal medicine."
This monumental ruling was quickly squashed by DEA
Director Judge Lawn. The Court of Appeals let Lawns ruling stand to
keep cannabis a schedule 1 drug. Each succeeding director has held up
this viewpoint for marijuana to be labeled a narcotic with no
medicinal value. Judge Francis Young goes down as one of the first
government official to acknowledge the beneficial use of medical
marijuana.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act
No comments:
Post a Comment