US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

Finally!

Then hopefully the f... UN can do that too.

I'm totally shocked that the UN has such a hard and shitty drug policy.

Wasn't that a project of Reagan's?

I believe the concept of drug 'scheduling' was introduced in the Controlled Substances Act under Richard Nixon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cannabis_laws_in_t....

Reagan had his War on Drugs, which resulted in the imprisonment of an order of magnitude more nonviolent drug offenders: https://www.britannica.com/topic/war-on-drugs

There was a debate in the early 80s on whether the country should concentrate on treatment or enforcement. Reagan introduced zero tolerance policies. He usually chose the wrong approach.

> Reagan introduced zero tolerance policies. He usually chose the wrong approach

That doesn't seem to clear cut with the recent failed (and now backpedaling) experiments regarding decriminalization and legalization of most drugs.

It's more like the stuff that doesn't work is being pushed again.

On it's surface it seems to have worked better than these experiments. Otherwise the experiments would not be getting rolled back...

There's very few if any fans of what played out in Portland, for instance. Overt drug usage exploded and became a much worse problem. The exact opposite of what proponents had hoped.

Some will say "but they didn't do it right" or similar - tired arguments we hear every time pet policies fail.

This is a very un-nuanced take on what happened in Portland, and lines up with what the uncritical and uninformed national reporting about Portland has been saying.

It was not successful, but it was also never effectively funded, not implemented well, and rolled out in a rush.

Bad execution undermines otherwise good policy.

Ideas don’t execute themselves and when someone doesn’t deliver the goods, it is human nature to question their decision making ability in the first place.

Being defensive or arguing nuance is fine in theory, but in practice bad outcomes tend to reinforce biases.

I would prefer fully baked ideas that are rigorous and practical rather than purely utopian and just hoping for the best. One does not roll out underfunded programs that play with safety and health.