AMAC Exclusive – By David Lewis Schaefer
Although 38 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of marijuana, while 24 states and the District have legalized recreational use, the drug remains a Schedule I substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act. But as a recently-unveiled federal government document reveals, some officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse now favor reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug – a move that would make it legally available with a doctor’s prescription and potentially open the door to far more widespread abuse.
According to a New York Times report published on January 12, a 250-page “scientific review” provided to a Texas lawyer who sued the Department of Health and Human Services (which oversees the FDA) for its release and then published it online found that marijuana “does not produce serious outcomes compared to drugs in Schedules I or II.” While the review acknowledged that marijuana “abuse” leads to physical dependence, it claimed that “the likelihood of serious outcomes is low.”
Although the Times reports that federal officials “cautioned that their analysis was not meant to suggest that they had established the safety and effectiveness of marijuana in a way that would support FDA approval,” and said that the data only supported “some medical uses,” their findings were apparently sufficient to lead the FDA to advise the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to recategorize it. DEA is expected to announce whether it will take that recommendation within a few months.
Yet having been scarred by the recent admissions from former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Anthony Fauci that much of the advice they offered the public about COVID-19’s likely origins and the means to prevent its spread (masks, six-foot distancing) was based on shaky premises, we members of the American public would be justified in viewing new claims ostensibly based on “science” with a degree of skepticism. This is particularly true when those claims conflict with everyday observation and experience.
A Wall Street Journal story which appeared just days after the Times story offers prime evidence that government scientists may be underselling the risks of marijuana use. As author Julie Wernau details, “more potent cannabis and more frequent use are contributing to higher rates of psychosis, especially in young people.”
The scientists that Wernau consulted reported that “thousands of teenagers and young adults… have developed delusions and paranoia after using cannabis.” Most concerning of all, the problem has grown as legalization efforts have made marijuana more widely available.
Marijuana strains today are also “many times as potent as strains common three decades ago.” The average THC content (the stuff in marijuana that gets users high) of cannabis seized by the DEA rose from 4 per cent in 1995 to 15 percent in 2021, while “many products advise THC concentrations of up to 90%.”
In other words, this isn’t your grandparents’ or even your parents’ pot.
Doctors told Wernau that “psychotic episodes following cannabis use could be more likely to lead to chronic psychiatric problems than those following consumption of other illicit drugs.” Even leaving aside the likelihood that marijuana can serve as a “gateway” to the use of other Class I substances like heroin, it seems marijuana might not be as harmless as FDA scientists would have us believe.
A 2017 study cited by Wernau also found that “even one psychotic episode following cannabis use was associated with a 47% chance” of the user’s developing schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, with the risk being highest for people in the 16 to 25 age range, and higher than “for substances including amphetamines, hallucinogens, opioids, and alcohol.”
Short of such horrifying risks, a report issued by the National Council on Drug Abuse in 2020 found that “marijuana’s negative effects on attention, memory, and learning can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off.” A 2021 study reported in the Chicago Sun Times, meanwhile, observes, “Research consistently shows that the more frequently a college student uses cannabis, the lower their GPA tends to be, the more they report skipping class and the longer it takes them to graduate. Probably the most direct impact to academic performance is a relationship between marijuana use and impaired attention and memory.”
These findings should hardly surprise parents who have observed the behavior of their offspring using much more powerful forms of marijuana than the parents may have indulged in when they were younger.
Even though the HHS review is said to have offered justification only for “medical” uses of marijuana, as attested by a doctor’s prescription, it isn’t hard to imagine how such prescriptions will become widely available as the risk officially attached to marijuana use is lowered. But given the dangers listed in Wernau’s story and in reports by the National Council on Drug Abuse and other authorities, Americans should be concerned about the use of America’s most popular illegal drug becoming even more widespread.
David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.
