By Patrick Devlin
cross posted at the demise
The US Drug Enforcement Agency has released the 2017 edition of its illegal drug resource guide, Drugs of Abuse, and the agency has updated its warnings regarding the illicit schedule one drug called cannabis.
The agency classifies illegal drugs using a five tiered system, with the least dangerous substances such as codeine cough syrup being categorized as schedule five drugs, and the most dangerous drugs, such as heroin, lysergic acid (LSD) and cannabis being categorized as schedule one drugs.
Drugs included in the agency’s schedule two, identified as being less dangerous than the schedule one drugs noted above include cocaine, oxycodone and Demerol.
This year the agency reconfirmed many of the long demonized alleged effects of cannabis, including problems with memory, distorted perceptions and loss of coordination – all of this rehashing of anti-cannabis propaganda was qualified by the agency’s admission that the “physiological, psychological and behavioral effects of marijuana vary among individuals.”
The agency includes in this year’s illicit drug guide warnings that clinical studies have revealed that cannabis users can experience additional frightening and debilitating effects including;
The agency also advises citizens that even though categorized as a dangerous schedule one substance, “No deaths from overdose of marijuana have been reported.”
This relatively honest reporting by the DEA, after its 80 year demonization of cannabis, is from one perspective salutary, as their list of cannabis effects comports with the personal experience of millions of cannabis users over hundreds, even thousands of years of using the substance.
On the other hand, the notion that our government’s drug enforcers actually believe that the public safety is threatened by merriment and happiness, that our law enforcers are fearfully stealing themselves to be able to respond to a relaxed and sociable citizenry, and that Americans have to be protected from music and art appreciators with heightened imagination is certainly thought provoking.
I feel a burst of creative imaginative energy coming on.
AK