Saturday, April 9, 2005

More on the future HHS response to Data Quality Act complaints For those who are not aware of the significance/importance of the Data Quality Act complaint I mentioned in the previous post, I thought I'd explain a bit. One of the most critical ways to loosen the federal death grip on marijuana is through re-scheduling. Marijuana is currently under Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act: SCHEDULE I The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Of course, Health and Human Services (HHS) has consistently denied, in their official materials, that marijuana has currently accepted medical use (despite all evidence). If they were to acknowledge accepted medical use, then the government would have a very hard time denying a petition to re-schedule marijuana. (And if marijuana was re-scheduled, then the feds would be unable to prevent medical marijuana programs.) The Data Quality Act complaint is forcing HHS to defend its materials in light of a list of scientific data a mile long showing accepted medical use of marijuana. So, HHS has no option but to deny the complaint. But how? I've been giving this some thought and have come up with some possibilities: Begging the Question: HHS declares that illegal activity cannot, by definition, be considered currently accepted medical use. Since marijuana is illegal, there is no accepted medical use, which therefore supports keeping it illegal. This kind of circular reasoning is right up the government's alley. However, this seems unlikely. They've got to know that it could eventually end up in court and a judge would find it laughable. The "But you don't have a double-blind, 20-year, multiple inhibitor 27R-stroke-J study" Response: Since it would be a huge task for HHS to repudiate each of the various scientific and medical studies mentioned in the complaint, they simply determine that a particular kind of study is the only valid way to judge accepted medical use and accepted safety. This would be a study that doesn't exist for marijuana, primarly because HHS and DEA have not allowed it. The problem with this for HHS is that there could well be other drugs that have also not had such a specific study done (and that aren't in Schedule 1). If so, that could be additional grounds for an appeal. The Impossible Standard Response Again, HHS doesn't bother responding to the various studies, but uses something specific to marijuana and claims that it hasn't been shown to have currently accepted medical use. For example, they say that since marijuana is made up of hundreds of compounds, that it can't have accepted medical use unless it's proven for each of those compounds separately and independently. This would be an unresponsive answer to the complaint, however, since the complaint requires them to acknowledge or refute the information that's out there. This wouldn't stop HHS from using this approach, but it would hurt them eventually in the courts. It's also possible that HHS may use a combination of approaches above. Regardless of what happens, they will be forced to eventually say something official that can be used against them in court. What's your wager? What response do you think HHS will use? One of the above, or something different? 11:12:49 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Update on Health and Human Services stalling tactics I've been reporting for some time about the efforts by Americans for Safe Access to use a new law called the Data Quality Act to force Health and Human Services to stop spreading false info about medical marijuana (a step which could, theoretically, assist long-term efforts to re-schedule medical marijuana). (Background post -- Actual Petition(pdf) ) At the time, I was excited about this, because the law requires that the agency respond in 60 days. (What I did not realize at the time was that the law also allows the agency to grant itself extensions.) The original complaint was filed on October 6, 2004. On December 1, HHS responded (in part) We have not yet completed our response to your complaint because of other agency priorities and the need to coordinate agency review of the response. We hop to provide you with a response within 60 days from the date of this letter. On February 2, 2005, HHS responded (in part): Your October 4, 2004, request for correction of information disseminated by the Department of Health and Human Services regarding the medical use of marijuana is still under review. While the goal of the Food and Drug Administration is to respond within 60 days to such requests, we are unable to do so in this case. We anticipate that a response will be forwarded to you by April 1, 2005. Now, last week, HHS responded (in part): We wrote to you on February 2, 2005, indicating that we would need additional time to complete our response to your request and expected to reply by April 1, 2005. At this time we are continuing to prepare our response but require additional time to coordinate Agency review. We anticipate that a response will be forwarded to you by April 15, 2005. Could it be that a real response is actually coming? Of course, they've now had six months to try to justify their lies. And if we don't like their response? Well then Americans for Safe Access will have 30 days to submit an appeal... to Health and Human Services! (As frustrating as all this appears, we need to keep working every angle. The press, the public, the legislators, the agencies, the courts. Baby steps... baby steps.) 11:10:23 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

More good articles Here are a couple of good articles via Cannabis News: Prohibition on Marijuana Does More Harm Than Good by Kris Millegan in the Register-Guard (OR) is a good response to an earlier article by prohibitionists. Millegan also provides us with a great line: Once a substance is banned and enters a black market, the age of the users goes down, the volume of abuse goes up, and civil and criminal corruption rises. Exactly right. Decriminalization: A Growing Debate by John Koziol in the Laconia, NH Citizen caught my attention when it started: Even though it's a political hot potato, civil libertarians and several lawmakers say Granite Staters should have a discussion about illegal substances, including the possibility of decriminalizing at least one of them: marijuana. That one paragraph says so much about part of the problem we face as drug policy reformers. We even have to work to convince people to have a discussion about the topic. That said, this article actually has a large number of intelligent, reform statements by politicians! (How did that happen?) [State Rep. David A. Welch, R-Kingston] agrees that the legal drugs -- alcohol and tobacco -- appear to cause more harm than the illegal ones. ... Speaking of the federal initiative to curb the influx and use of illegal substances, "I don't believe the war on drugs has been effective, said Welch. "It certainly hasn't been cost-effective, and it certainly isn't working. "I think we need to take a harder look at it at the national level," he added. ... "Arresting people doesn't work," said Welch. ... State Rep. Tim Robertson, D-Keene, whom Welch called the "conscience of our committee" and who was the primary sponsor of HB197, said that, if drugs were legal, people would not be dying of heroin overdoses in New Hampshire. ... But Robertson is not out to decriminalize all drugs, just one. "If we legalized marijuana, we would find that it wasn't the death knell for society in the way that the anti-marijuana people say. The whole drug war is quite similar to prohibition, which we gave up on." ... "I stand on principle," said Robertson. "I hate hypocrites and I try not to be one." The war on drugs, he said, is "creating a whole number of people who've been convicted and served time for not a very good reason" -- possession or use of marijuana. "With marijuana, you usually don't do violent things, you usually don't drive, get into a fight. It's my understanding -- I have had a puff once in my life but I'm much too old to have been in the habit -- that you get hungry and you might get romantic but apart from that you keep your moral base. It doesn't attack the same parts of your brain that alcohol does." Robertson said the federal government is conflicted about marijuana because it can not figure out a way to regulate it, and, ultimately, to tax it. "It's very difficult to tax or make money selling a weed. Marijuana will grow anywhere. The average user probably could grow all they need in a window box or in their closet and a lot of them do. It's tough to tax something that you can go down the street and pick up in an empty lot. The average marijuana user is smoking 3-4 joints per week and it's not like cigarettes. It's not addictive and if the price got too high you could stop." Good article. Lots of good quotes in it besides the ones I included here. 10:34:44 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []