Feds Aim to Reclassify Marijuana

May 01, 2024

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DANIEL MCGRAW: Pot Luck: Feds Poised to Reclassify Marijuana

Tiara Artis, center, pulls on her joint of marijuana during a training event for officers to recognize impairment in users of the newly legal substance, in Gaithersburg, Maryland in early 2023. (Photo by Bill O’Leary / Washington Post via Getty Images)

ON TUESDAY, NEWS BROKE that the Drug Enforcement Administration is set to ease restrictions on the sale, possession, and use of marijuana, bringing an end to over half a century of its classification as a highly restricted Schedule I drug. In 1970, under pressure from President Richard Nixon, Congress passed the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), which established the drug classification system to control and regulate substances at the federal level. The CSA established harsher penalties for the sale or possession of a variety of drugs. Politically, the impetus for the CSA was the antipathy of Nixon and the “silent majority” toward the Sixties counterculture—those rotten hippies with their long hair and their hatred for America.¹ The new law was particularly overbearing in its targeting of one of their favorite drugs, putting marijuana in the Schedule I drug category, the most restrictive, and jail time for pot possession got upped in a major way.

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