The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposed rules earlier this year that would officially give cannabis status as a medication rather than an illegal narcotic – that's exciting news for researchers, but will rescheduling mean that cannabis could soon move from the dispensary to the drug store? Experts say it's not that simple. Peter Grinspoon, a physician, Harvard medical school instructor and author of the book Seeing Through the Smoke, says that the upshot of rescheduling will be "a little bit incoherent".
Under the new rules, cannabis would be reclassified as a schedule III drug – meaning any cannabis-based medications would probably require FDA approval and a doctor's prescription. This will mean it would still be more regulated than alcohol and tobacco, says Grinspoon, even though it is "safer by every metric". Meanwhile, cannabis will continue to be available at state-legal dispensaries without the FDA's signoff.
The most important change is symbolic, Grinspoon says, because "the US government is once again admitting that [cannabis] is a medicine." It's currently very difficult to get permission from the federal government to do research on the cannabis plant. Grinspoon thinks rescheduling could make it easier to study medical cannabis by easing stigma as well as legal restrictions.
"Cannabis isn't magically different from everything else," he says. "It's less harmful than opiates, but it still has harms, and if you use it, you should want to know the harms." People on both sides of the debate "are going to be sort of forced to contend with reality".
Read more at theguardian.com