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The Obama administration has launched the “we can’t wait” initiative. Since President Obama isn’t going to get much legislation approved by the Republican controlled House or the dysfunctional Senate, his administration is planning to use the powers of the executive branch to launch a series of small scale programs to help improve the lives of Americans and increase jobs.
It’s true that taking significant actions to improve many aspects of the economy will be very difficult for the White House unless they can get a reluctant Congress to approve new laws. But there is at least one area where the administration has all the power it needs to make a huge impact: medical marijuana.
The executive branch already has the power to nationally legalize medical marijuana, and it doesn’t require Congressional action. The Controlled Substance Act gives the executive branch the authority to change the schedule — the classification – of a drug.
The only reason medical marijuana can’t be legally prescribed under federal law is that it is a schedule I drug, meaning it is legally defined as having no “acceptable medical use.” But President Obama can direct the relevant agencies under his control to move marijuana to schedule III or IV. This would make marijuana use legally permissible like other schedule III drugs, such as Vicoden. This would allow doctors to legally prescribe and clinics to legally supply patients with medical marijuana, while still keeping recreational marijuana illegal.
This would be not an extraordinary or unusual executive action for Obama to take. Prescription drugs are often rescheduled by the executive branch based on new evidence. Nor would it be a politically unpopular move. Last year a Pew poll found 73 percent support medical marijuana and an ABC News/Washington Post poll found 81 percent support medical marijuana.
The current federal prohibition against medical marijuana is costing jobs and hurting patients all over the country. The Obama administration’s aggressive enforcement of the federal laws against medical marijuana is preventing some states from opening medical marijuana clinics and forcing clinics to close in other states. This directly costs many jobs in the field and indirectly reduces public sector jobs by reducing local tax revenue.
If Obama is serious about the claim “we can’t wait” for the Congressional Republicans, that policy should apply to medical marijuana; he doesn’t need to wait for Congress. The Obama administration can change the rules to legalize medical marijuana at the federal level and can stop his administration’s aggressive enforcement against it. The only thing really standing in the way of making medical marijuana legal right now is the Obama administration, not Congress.
Since Obama has this very popular, deficit reducing way to create thousands of jobs that doesn’t require Congressional action, my question to him is: Why are you making us wait?
29 Comments
If I’m not mistaken, hasn’t a company already applied to the FDA for approval of essentially medical marijuana?
My guess is that’s where this is going.
O is waiting to see how much that corp is going to contribute to his reelection campaign.
BTW, do you have a link or can you name the corp. This would be a wonderful test case to follow the benjamins.
There is some who think that Obama current aggression towards medical marijuana is to pave the for it to be controlled by large drug companies that will get FDA exclusivity to a particular forms of marijuana extract, while still leaving non-patented traditional grown whole medical marijuana illegal. One particular extract is currently in stage three trials right now.
There is no direct proof to back up this belief, but Obama does have a history of making campaign based deals with drug companies.
Raw (i.e. unpasteurized) honey has well known antibacterial properties.
Some big U.S. PhRMA is “developing” a particular form wh they can “patent.” I no longer have the link, but think the testing is taking place in New Zealand. Gonna get the jump on all those DFHs with their single hives from horning in on their profits.
GW Pharmacueticals is the company the product is Sativex. GW is UK based and sanctioned, they have ten greenhouses that house 30,000 plants at a time in every stage of development. Upon FDA approval they would epand their operations ten fold, no doubt. I wish they didn’t exist, cannabis is not meant to be exploited by big phama.
Oh come on Jon. That would require him to A) stop kowtowing to the money changers and B) grow a spine. He won’t do either, which is why medical dispensaries are being shut down by the ATF and federal prosecutors even as we speak.
“Sativex”? The munchies without the buzz no doubt. No thanks.
The sooner we open our eyes to the real Obama, the sooner we can start working for his replacement.
Obama might not be one of the bat-$#!t Republicans, but his actions make him at least a ’90′s Republican.
People need to know what is possible so they can make their own judgements
I’m not ripping you for writing the post! I’m pointing out how unlikely it is to happen. I’ll leave you alone.
Will forward your info to someone with a Greg Palast connection. Only way I know to get an investigative reporter on the case. Don’t know where, if anywhere, it will go, but worth a try. Thanks.
President Obama can Never allow any Legalization of Medical Marijuana, even if 100% of the people support it: He is too beholden to investors in Hemp’s competitors: Oil, Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, for instance.
What’s he going to do? Give that money back and turn honest?
If I was Obama, I’d want the entire population to be as stoned as is humanly possible for the duration of his presidency.
Obama can’t much done with a GOP house and a dysfunctional senate, or in other words a Democrat senate.
Truth in advertising.
A pardon for all pot felons is in O’s power too and I want a pony since we are asking for things O will never give us.
I think the debate is yes its possible, yes it would create jobs, yes it would stop millions from abusing booze and pain killers and save lives, yes farmers would no longer need to get cash from the government to survive. Yes Farmers could afford to pay their workers over time!
But O is bought by the parasite drug companies they want to keep selling us drugs and booze and don’t want us growing gardens and getting pot for free.
Our government Dem and GOP are both parasite controlled. We have all the arguments on why this makes sense but to do something about it we need a revolution.
Are Parasites are to lazy to buy a farm and grow the best pot to compete they prefer things stay the way they are now.
We need to bypass the Media and Washington and tell Farmers they can make a ton of money. We need to bypass the media and say jobs. We need to tell the states real estate taxes won’t likely go up for 10 years either cut spending on police and teachers or tax pot. We need to tell all those people using pain killers pot at least won’t make you a junkie.
We need tv ads showing junkies saying I got hooked on heroin when the pain pills stopped working. I got hooked on Oxy and when that stopped working I started crushing my pills and buying blackmarket pills and ended up a junkie I wish I had smoked pot instead of listening to my doctor.
Personal stories video of personal stories is the ticket.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
In Afghanistan the farmers raise poppy instead of wheat or pomegranates, bc poppy is a very drought resistant plant and Afghanistan has been in a severe drought for a long long time.
Geez. What a dilemma. What an executive decision. Get the voters stoned or get donations from PhRMA.
There has been talk of America just buying the entire crop and either using it legally or paying them to grow something else but I suspect the CIA wants to keep selling it.
Prohibitions have only one beneficiary: organized crime. 0bama & Holder are protecting the black market. They have made deals with Mexican drug gangs (like supplying some of them with weapons to kill other, less “US-friendly” gangsters) for political reasons, and they (along with American drug gangs like the CIA and DEA) depend upon the revenues generated by the illicit trade to pursue their agenda.
If marijuana were legal for medicinal or recreational use, the gangs’ major income source would disappear. Just my theory, of course, but 0bama loves him some secret back-room deals, and under this administration, the well-being of the American people has been frequently sacrificed to political expediency behind closed doors.
Developing: whistleblower claims a Merck memo threatening to inject Idi Obama with a drug designed to change his complexion to Republican White if he decides to legalize med. cann.
This is just a tangent/rant….
I was buying weed last week and it was a nightmare. I was jerked around for hours and then had to come back the next day. And then the stuff was utter crap. I only even put up with it as long as I did because my other option was to pay outragous prices for something that was in reality just normal weed regardless of his claims
One of the guys with me made the point that this shit doesnt go down in California anymore because people can just go to the store.
So i can easily see how the current pot industry is really against anything that would make them have to actually not be ****heads.
Obama subscribes to the belief that only the chosen few self appointed Big Pharma Gods have the right to own anything medicinal. Regular rabble are never to be bestowed such blessings as they are undeserving lowlifes.
Are you saying that OUR PRESIDENT is in league with the Mexican Mafia? That he’s a party to mass murder? My God!
Surely no responsible President, much less such a refined, intelligent, and compassionate man as Barack Obama, would ever think of doing something like that. It’s as impossible to conceive of as the idea of President Obama deliberately murdering multiple US Citizens, including a 16-year-old boy.
…Oh, wait. Never mind. Carry on. :)
If a drug company is making a synthetic form of THC, how can anybody in the medical community claim that the medicinal benefits of cannabis are disputable? Better yet, if the FDA approves any synthetic THC, then they are admitting that cannabis, and the THC it contains, is in fact beneficial. Why hasn’t this argument been brought up in a public debate? It is proof of the blatant hypocrisy in the governments “public policy”. This is more than just about smoking cannabis and feeling good, which is everybody’s right. It is the evidence that we are the pawns of the government, the rich, and the powerful, and they control us to keep themselves in power. What country are we living in?
An Obamanation….. As someone who has lived through one of Obama’s multi-agency raids, I can tell you first hand there will be ZERO support from the top on this issue. Obama is going after votes at this point and the general public (ones who actually vote) will not support full legalization or re-scheduling of cannabis. Untiil laws are changed surrounding the patenting of natural substances there is no money to be made by big parma off cannabis. Any patient who has used Marinol will tell you the synthetic variations are NOT equivalent to all of the multiple compounds found in naturally grown cannabis.
But none the less I could not vote for one of the WackPack members AKA the GOP… 2012 is looking grim.