US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

How? It's still federally illegal to sell schedule 3 to consumers without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing. The banks would still be knowingly in conspiracy to transmit illegal drug money and a litany of felonies for recreational or purely state-licensed 'medical'.

You can sell schedule 3 drugs to consumers. Pharmacies do this all the time.

'without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing'

Rx under DEA scrutiny is nothing like rec or laughable state controlled medical 'recommendations'. You pull that shit as a provider on controlled scripts and your charts get audited, your DEA license gets pulled.

But it does mean that it will actually, for the first time ever in living memory, be possible for someone to fully federally legally possess a THC-active form of cannabis without further Congressional action. I'm not sure if a state-legal cannabis supply chain could be fully federally legal in this context, but imagine if a pharma company goes through the FDA approval process for a THC pill and then doctors prescribe it for patients based on their medical judgment that it will help alleviate pain for some chronic condition like Crohn's disease. (I expect both of those steps to happen in practice, over time of course due to how many prerequisites exist for FDA approval, to the extent they haven't already been begun.)

Imagine a noncitizen in that situation being able to tell a border officer, or a citizen being able to tell a security clearance investigator: "Yes, I do use THC. Here's my prescription and the bottle from the pharmacy." and being confident of no negative repercussions. Wonderful progress compared to where we are now.

Agree with the sentiment but isn't legal marinol roughly fulfilling that niche of THC pill?

You could already get THC script, in that context this seems like a half hearted concession for flower to stall and poison legalization efforts by giving a victory poisoned with DEA licensing that inserts the nasty tendrils of the weed hating DEA into medical flower.

> for the first time ever in living memory

My parents are still alive and they were alive when THC was legal.

This is what's bonkers to me, THC being criminalized happened very recently.

Very briefly. Until recent history the 10th amendment was understood to constrain the government from going outside enumerated powers, like intrastate commerce. This is why they needed an amendment instead of law to federally outright ban alcohol. Thus weed had an essentially unpayable 'tax' that got overturned by Timothy Leary

Then it was legal for like a year until feds realized they didn't need to follow the Constitution and they just outright made it illegal, no matter if it's actually interstate.

> it will actually, for the first time ever in living memory, be possible for someone to fully federally legally possess a THC-active form of cannabis without further Congressional action.

Interesting point of history, the Federal US Government has actually been running a small medical program for almost 50 years. https://www.mpp.org/policy/federal/federal-governments-medic...

I think the point is that banks are no longer automatically required to reject any customer that deals with weed, because some of those transactions are going to be legal under the federal law. Which basically allows them to look the other way for all such transactions.

"'without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing'"

I know of several grocery stores without pharmacies or a local Rx license selling 1% hydrocortisone/hydrocortisone acetate - Schedule 4, 3, AND 2, simultaneously.

1% hydrocortisone, at least in the US, is not a controlled drug not do you need a pharmacy license to sell it.

No different than buying Tylenol at a gas station.

Fair point, yes. I was unaware of marinol when I typed that. I assume something more than just synthetic THC is being rescheduled, then. Maybe it will actually become possible to be prescribed a joint and to receive it at DEA-licensed pharmacies? Will the FDA be approving joints as drugs after clinical trials?