US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

I really don't think this is a positive in any way, unless you oppose recreational marijuana usage.

Making it a schedule III puts it back in "Doctor prescription" territory, and since there's now a legal route to getting it, a lot of these businesses that have operated with impunity are breaking a different set of laws if it's schedule III. No doubt that laws and decriminalization statutes would need to be updated to comply federally. Banks may be able to be used, but only if you're a registered pharmacy. It's really just a lot more questions and a lot more people to profit on the chain to selling it.

Most of the world still treats it as an illegal substance. In the US we have definitely allowed popular sentiment to make it appear much less harmful than it is. I'm not sure it belongs in schedule I, but it certainly doesn't belong OTC.

You'll be able to get a doctor rx super easily, think like all these viagra and adderall rx mills.

You seem to believe that a move from Schedule I (totally illegal to sell) to Schedule III (legal to sell under some circumstances) is going to hit the reset button on state laws around cannabis. That seems unlikely, the states are already ignoring the feds on this, this is just a step the feds are taking to bring the federal legal landscape closer to the state landscape. The major changes will simply be, as others have stated, to make it possible to travel with cannabis (with an Rx) and for dispensaries and others to use FDIC insured banking and transfer mechanisms.

Other than that, nothing is likely to change unless states walk back the laws they've already passed.

Remember, it's already illegal on the federal level for these businesses to exist, and that isn't stopping them.

Supposed evidence of the harmfulness of cannabis compared to alcohol shows that cannabis absolutely deserves to be OTC and available for recreational use. Popular sentiment is popular precisely because the supposed harm has never materialized to the point of justifying the paternalistic and authoritarian control of social groups who tend to use cannabis.

> I'm not sure it belongs in schedule I, but it certainly doesn't belong OTC.

How is it more dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol?

Prescriptions are basically a formality. There are a certain set of symptoms you have to describe to a doctor in order to get any particular drug, then you go to a doctor and get the prescription. It has to be this way because many of the conditions have no non-invasive tests to determine if the patient is lying and as much as the DEA would like it to be the case, doctors are not supposed to be cops and they can't be effective doctors if they have to play CYA all day.

But at that point all the law is doing is propping up pharma profits and inflating healthcare costs by routing recreational use through the insurance system, and screw that. If you want to eat pot brownies then you should a) pay the market price, not a tax to corporate shareholders, and b) pay it yourself, not stick the cost on everyone who buys health insurance.

Know that the reason why it's illegal in so many places to begin with is because of the US. Weed wasn't really an "issue" anywhere. Until the US drug war began and spread to other countries thru international narcotic treaties.

Obviously there are outliers and certain cultures where domestic policy was also heavily at play (Japan). But many European countries didn't view weed as particularly problematic.

Once there is a framework for legal sale, and regulations around it, you think all these states will continue to just not comply?

They've been thumbing their nose at more more serious laws until now, why would a downgrade in consequences suddenly make them burn down industries that bring in billions?

Imo the states get far too much revenue from recreational taxes and I imagine the Fed doesn't want that to change either.

It's really just a few dinosaur pearl clutchers that are preventing it from being descheduled entirely