Too Little, Too Late: Biden's Pathetic Ploy for Votes

"Historic," hunh?

So, as much as I want to bury my head in the sand & pretend it's not happening, election season is upon us.  Biden is trying to get ahead of the game & balance out his horrific policy failures at home & crimes against humanity abroad by rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III, a move he & his media minions call "historic".  If by historic you mean the bare fucking minimum, sure.  Coming from the guy who created the RAVE Act, a bill that made it illegal to supply water to people at raves where overheating and hyperthermia are a leading cause of death, his words ring hollow.  Cannabis never should've BEEN in Schedule I next to drugs like heroin & alpha-methylfentanyl ("China White") but I guess progress is progress & I should shut my dirty peasant mouth and be grateful for crumbs, eh?   

A closer look at the list of Schedule I controlled substances reveals that many of the most well-known drugs in this category do not belong there any more than cannabis does.  What are Biden, the DEA & other lawmakers doing to remove them from this informational black hole where even scientists & medical professionals dare not tread?  The reason there's such a dearth of information on things like the psychiatric effects of cannabis on the developing brain and Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (the awful affliction that causes "scromiting" in some long-term users) is because the plant was banned for 80+ years.  In no universe is ignorance about drugs preferable to knowledge, yet that's the world our government fosters, both for kids with its useless abstinence-only drug (mis)education, and for the rest of us by placing so many drugs in Schedule I.

Why shouldn't this be the case for all drugs?

 

Continuing to sentence other drugs and their users to this same fate when we know better is not only wrong, it's criminal.  If even one person could be helped or cured by one of these substances, it deserves to be rescheduled & made available legally.  We already know that making drugs (or anything else) illegal doesn't get rid of them & only increases the associated dangers, thus the War On Drugs is unwinnable & actively malign.  The time for symbolic gestures is long past--we need action on archaic, draconian drug policy yesterday. Instead we're going in the opposite direction, drafting new hysterical fentanyl-specific laws that sentence dealers to up to life in prison when someone OD's and using the USPS to track down vendors in high profile deaths like that of Matthew Perry.  

Here are some of the substances that must be moved out of Schedule I immediately based on their potential for medicinal use, their low risk for abuse/addiction & overall low toxicity:  

- Peyote (mescaline)
- MDMA

- LSD

- Psilocybin Mushrooms (psilocybin, psilocin)
- 2C-B
- DMT
- Iboga (ibogaine)
- Methylone
- Khat

This is not a definitive list--I fully believe all drugs should be legal and available through safe channels to consenting adults, and that nobody deserves to lose their freedom for drug possession, use or sales.  These are just the ones that we know are extremely safe for healthy people when taken in rational doses, and they almost certainly have important medicinal applications (some of them, such as MDMA, began as therapy/psychiatric drugs before moving to the street, and methylone is already patented as an antidepressant by its creator Alexander Shulgin).  I don't personally care for psychedelics but acknowledge their place in psychotherapy & the treatment of horrific conditions like cluster headaches.

Why Schedule III, and Why Now?

Schedule III drugs are deemed to have "currently accepted medicinal use in the U.S." plus "potential for abuse less than drugs in Schedules I and II" and "moderate/low physical dependence and high psychological dependence when abused."  A few of the drugs in this category include anabolic steroids, pharmaceutical preparations of GHB*, ketamine & certain codeine combination drugs.  Uhh, sorry to burst your bubble DEA but cannabis really doesn't fit in THAT group too well either.   🤦🏻‍♀

Real world changes of rescheduling pot via Drug Policy Alliance

 

Perhaps the scheduling system should take into consideration the actual health risks of various drugs rather than just their potential for abuse?  What's the harm in being a daily user of something if it has no ill effect on your health either immediately or in the long-term?  Millions of Americans (including kids) drink caffeinated beverages every day for instance & no one bats an eye because it's legal.  If caffeine was suddenly placed in Schedule I you best believe a majority of this nation would be awfully irritable, exhausted & headache-y as they endured withdrawals from their staple stimulant.  

Yet neither caffeine nor marijuana really causes organ damage when used in the long term.  But taking some of these CIII drugs habitually would not be a good thing over time.  Ketamine, for instance, can cause serious bladder damage when abused.  I'm talking pissing out bloody chunks of your bladder lining.  And we all know the risks of anabolic steroids, which range from acne & mood swings to prostate cancer, heart attacks & liver/kidney damage even when taken periodically in "cycles".  Weed?  Not so much. 

Addiction in itself is a stumbling block--an inconvenience that can be costly & disruptive to one's life.  But if it's not causing any ill health effects, what business is it of the government's what adults consume in private off the clock?  I don't like that I have to take Prozac every day and, while it's easy to get now, the drug shortages this nation is going through do worry me.   Am I "addicted"?  Physically dependent?  It doesn't cause a high whatsoever but if I quit abruptly I'll have symptoms that, for me, are indistinguishable from opioid withdrawals:  flu-like respiratory symptoms, fatigue, horrid anxiety, nightmares, cold sweats & depression.  The difference is opioid withdrawals last a week at most; SSRI withdrawals last a month.  And opioids are more effective than a sugar pill for my depression.

It's clear this "historic move" is an attempt by Biden to win votes & deflect from his other atrocious betrayals of the public's trust.  Make as many symbolic gestures as you want, we remember that Roe was overturned on your watch despite you & other Dems promising to "codify" it for decades.  We've all felt the sting as the cost of living has risen by 23% since the pre-COVID era & necessities like baby formula and 323 Rx drugs have been critically absent from store shelves at various times since you took office.  And after all that, you had the gall to send $1 billion in military aid to Israel--a developed nation--to finance their soulless & perpetual war on Palestinian civilians.  There's another elephant in the room and it isn't Trump:  You're clearly in the middle stages of dementia which makes the whole circus unethical to begin with.  I'd call it a form of elder abuse & I'm being 101% serious.  You couldn't pay me to vote for you or whoever is pulling your strings at this point.  

Warhawk-in-Chief: Biden's Middle East meddling a costly failure.

And no, that does not mean I'll be casting a vote for Team Elephant's candidate, a narcissistic nepo baby who's caught 2 state and 2 federal indictments and is currently on trial AGAIN for paying "hush money" to a porn star who he allegedly said "reminded him of his daughter."  (A fact she attested to under oath at said trial).  And you shouldn't either unless you want to hasten Civil War 2.0.  His time in office was no fucking cakewalk either if you'll recall.  His total denial of the COVID situation cost us over 1 million lives, more than any nation on Earth.  Many of these precious people belonged to his own voting demographic.  If China or Russia killed 1 million plus Americans, we'd be dropping nukes on them by sundown.  When an American billionaire does it, he becomes Republican frontrunner for POTUS.  

You can't tell me these two doddering, disoriented speed freaks--each with a history of sexual assault allegations under his belt--are the best & brightest the U.S (population:  333.3 million) has to offer.  The fact that they're facing off a 2nd time despite both shitbombing their respective terms in office is proof that our presidents are mere figureheads; actors put in place to keep Americans entranced while the real rulers (billionaires like Gates & Bezos; families like the Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, Rockefellers & Kochs; profiteers in the military weapons industry, Big Oil/Pharma/Ag, etc) make off with what's left of our futures. 

I literally cannot do 4 more years of this freak on every channel a la North Korea.

As long as people engage in horse race politics in which they choose the candidate they believe is most likely to win against the other party (as opposed to the candidate who most closely represents their values), we'll continue our race to the bottom & our slide into global irrelevance.  And there'll be a lot of nations cheering when we finally go down.  Not for nothing either:  We've made a lot of well-deserved enemies along the way.  

Enjoy your still-not-legal weed, I guess.   🙄

* Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is a Schedule I controlled substance except in the form of a pharmaceutical drug to treat narcolepsy, when it's Schedule III.  Same exact substance with the same exact risks, the only difference is who profits from its sale.  Just goes to show how fucked up the whole system is, eh?  

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Hi!  Like the article?  Drop a donation in one of the accounts below.  Google AdSense does not support "drug-related" content so I rely on your contributions to keep this blog running.  It's hard out here for an independent freelance writer in the digital age.  Thanks!

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