Why rescheduling marijuana is wrong

At the end of last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to expedite the process to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. This is the wrong move.
Contrary to the administration’s argument that rescheduling cannabis would primarily facilitate medical research, moving marijuana to Schedule III would also deliver significant tax breaks to the marijuana industry, not just for medical research. Even the THC industry acknowledges that there are already over 35,000 studies on cannabis over the past decade alone. The industry just doesn’t like what the studies are concluding.
A rigorous scientific analysis of the medical claims for cannabis found limited proven benefits to many conditions, according to a comprehensive 2017 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine review. Just a month ago, an analysis by UCLA Health of research articles was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It found the potential for serious psychiatric and physical harms.
“The evidence does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids at this point for most of the indications that folks are using it for,” the leading author of the study told The New York Times.
Additionally, roughly 3 in 10 cannabis users, including medical users, met criteria for a cannabis use disorder.
Fortunately, Trump signed a federal spending bill that moves to close the hemp-derived loophole by restricting or banning many intoxicating THC-infused products. Most Texas Republicans are still putting public health and safety first.
Texans should see little direct adverse impact from rescheduling. But the now super-charged marijuana industry still intends to enter the Texas market through the Trojan Horse of “medical marijuana.”
As early as 1979, the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws revealed its strategy to a student newspaper at Emory University in Atlanta: “We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, we’ll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.” NORML has disputed the context and interpretation, but its intentions were clear.
In fact, several of the out-of-state firms approved for Texas medical cannabis licenses are affiliated with companies that operate recreational cannabis businesses in other states.
Thankfully, Texas law has guardrails designed to prevent the widespread black-market and organized criminal activity that have plagued Oklahoma’s permissive “medical marijuana” regime — but only if the Legislature’s intent is fully enforced on an industry that even its own compliance experts acknowledge has frequently flouted regulations.
The Texas Compassionate Use Program just added chronic pain as an authorized diagnosis, but some chronic pain studies showed limited benefit above a placebo effect and little prospective evidence that users were able to reduce their opioid use. PTSD also qualifies, but the Veteran Affairs Department does not recommend its use for treatment of PTSD, as some studies suggest cannabis can be harmful, particularly when used for long periods of time.
The American Psychiatric Association states that there is “no current scientific evidence that cannabis is in any way beneficial for the treatment of any psychiatric disorder.” Veterans are frequently promoted by the THC industry for marketing purposes, but in reality, their products have a disproportionate impact on most vulnerable populations.
More important, the public should be aware of the very real risks of cannabis use, including addiction, mental health harms and physical injury. These include learning and academic outcomes, increased risk of car crashes, suicidal ideation, psychosis and schizophrenia, higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and diabetes.
Even those who believe it’s “no worse than alcohol” should know that research has found frequent cannabis users to be about five times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder, according to a decade old study. Whether or not THC is a gateway drug to other dangerous illicit drugs, it is likely leading to more need for prescription drugs and abuse of alcohol.
The American public’s support for the cannabis agenda is softening under the weight of the evidence they are now seeing with their own eyes. Texans should learn from the failed experiments in other states before rolling more THC through our gate and state regulators should recognize these new actors for what they are.