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DEA Chief Claims “Marijuana is Not Medicine”

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During a speech at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio last week, Drug Enforcement Administration Chief Chuck Rosenberg disparaged the use of cannabis as medicine.

“If it turns out that there is something in smoked marijuana that helps people, that’s awesome,” he said. “I will be the last person to stand in the way of that. … But let’s run it through the Food and Drug Administration process, and let’s stick to the science on it.”

The call for FDA approval of medical cannabis is a common one, especially among those who can’t muster actual opposition based on the facts about marijuana. As much as they’d like to pretend that the FDA is the final authority on whether something can be used as a safe medicine, the dozens of FDA-approved prescription drugs that were later recalled belie that notion.

Beyond that, millions of people rely on medical cannabis every day to treat various ailments with a great deal of success. But it seems none of that matters to people like Chuck Rosenberg.

This is not the first time Rosenberg has said something completely uninformed about cannabis. In late 2015 he called medical marijuana a “joke,” and it would seem that in the 18+ months since, he has done no research on the issue whatsoever.

Those who support marijuana legalization for medicinal purposes have no problem with more research. But to claim that marijuana is not medicine just because the very fallible people at the FDA have not deemed it so is either ignorant or a calculated effort to deceive the public. Since information on marijuana as medicine is readily available to anyone with an Internet connection, I would lean toward the latter.

As time goes on, the DEA proves more and more just how useless it is; a waste of taxpayer money to the tune of billions of dollars every year, with no end in sight. As much as we would all like to believe that the DEA’s reign of error will be over soon, the federal government is not known for dismantling agencies that waste taxpayer money. If anything, they just throw more money at the problem and hope things get better.

People like Chuck Rosenberg having power over marijuana policy in this country is hurting millions of citizens every day. Patients know that marijuana is medicine because they have seen it work. Chuck Rosenberg would see it too, if he ever bothered to look.

3 COMMENTS

  1. ” But let’s run it through the Food and Drug Administration process, and let’s stick to the science on it.”
    We hear that same excuse all the time from government . When you ask government for the science that proves cannabis is bad all you get is crickets . Where is that science and why isn’t any one hounding the DEA / government to prove it’s case with scientific fact ?

  2. TAKE BACK THE D.E.A.!!!

    The D.E.A. and F.D.A. both stand in defiance of Congress and also the Senate as well as the wish of the citizens. Because of the misuse and abuse of responsibility and credibility as well as incompetence and refusal to reform in their war against marijuana the enforcement power of the D.E.A. should be removed and placed back into the hands of the state. A semi-secret elite police force within what is already a police state is way over the top. America does not need this throwback to the cold war era. These Federal offices have become a haven of renegade Authoritarian despots and tyrants commandeering and miss-directing hundreds of millions even billions into their drug war against American citizens and likewise funding state police regimes both within the U.S. and worldwide.It is these federal agency’s that have created the drug problem solely to commandeer funding and as their power base. Well in excess of sixty percent of F.D.A. employees are bribed into going to work for the pharmaceutical industry. The D.E.A. is no more than an arm of the pharmaceutical industry. These renegade authoritarians as well as the pro drug-war Authoritarians in the F.B.I. need to be controlled or removed Anyone who can not tell the difference between a harmless and beneficial plant such as marijuana and a dangerous and destructive drug like meth does not need to be in any position of responsibility.