Legal Commentary

A Wiser Drug Policy

By Jeralyn

The New York City Bar Association's Committee on Drugs and the Law has issued a short report, A Wiser Course: Ending Drug Prohibition, Fifteen Years Later (pdf.)

They make several recommendations.

Today the Committee makes a renewed call for a serious discussion of U.S. drug policy through a focus on the medical paradigm and the Controlled Substances Act.

The medical paradigm is one of three for legitimate use of psychoactive substances. The other two are sacramental (think peyote) and recreational. Our federal drug laws are tied to the medical. Among the recommended changes: [More...]

1. Evaluate the Utility of Schedule I

The basic structure of the Controlled Substances Act has the odd effect of placing drug control in a medical paradigm controlled not by medical experts but by law enforcement agents.

Section 812(b)(1)(b) states that a substance may never be used as a medicine if it has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” Since the description is passive – “accepted medical use” – the unanswered question is “accepted by whom”? By a policeman or a physician? By a physician or a patient? By a judge or a defendant?

It is because of this fatal ambiguity in language – leaving open a power struggle over who defines what constitutes medicine, or, more broadly, healing—that Congress should reexamine the CSA’s basic definitions and scheduling criteria. The fatal ambiguity is the essence of prohibitionist drug control: the authority of police to second-guess physicians in medical matters, in particular here in determining whether a given substance can have a medical use for a given patient.

Second recommendation: Take marijuana out of Schedule I. Schedule I applies to psychoactive substances with (a) a high potential for abuse, (b) no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and © a lack of accepted safety under medical supervision. Marijuana does not belong in Schedule I.

Remaining recommendations:

• 3. Re-evaluate Scheduling Criteria and Regulatory Agency
• 4. Abolish Bureaucratic Distinctions Between Substances

Conclusion:

The results of failed U.S. drug policies are all around us, from international drug cartels and crises to overburdened prison systems to broken families. Drug control policy consists of laws, the root of which are criminal laws limiting the use of psychoactive substances based on conclusions about their medical utility.

It is incumbent upon the legal profession, the medical profession, citizens and their representatives, without further delay, to begin an earnest and sustained dialogue about our drug control laws and the assumptions upon which they rest.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 14, 2009 (boomark / email).