Rescheduling marijuana would be a terrible mistake for the Trump administration

Up in smoke

There are several stories circulating that claim that President Trump is nearing a decision on whether or not to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I drug to Schedule III drug. Rescheduling marijuana would still leave the drug illegal without a prescription at a federal level (it would be regulated in the same way steroids and ketamine are), but would allow marijuana-related businesses to reap billions of dollars in new tax benefits and conduct their operations ways that were previously illegal.

The promise of the second Trump administration was to end America’s decline. Dramatic increases in the rate of drug use are part of that decline. I don’t think anyone who has gone in a public space during the last few years can honestly claim that they have not experienced this increase in drug use rates firsthand. No one honestly thinks that their life would be improved by a weed shop opening up in their neighborhood or by a friend or family member beginning to smoke weed regularly.

The advocacy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana has several one pagers that lay out the negative impacts of marijuana use: Daily users of marijuana commit crime at substantially higher rates than the general public. Areas that legalize marijuana experience substantial increases in violent crimes. Regular marijuana use reduces IQ, impairs memory and learning, and is associated with greatly increased rates of mental illness and use of other, more harmful, drugs. The impact of widespread drug use on young people, including children in the womb, is devastating. You are setting them up for failure by creating a society where there is no legal or illegal stigma against marijuana use. Everyone knows someone who has fucked up their life with this stuff.

America’s experiment with marijuana decriminalization has failed disastrously. Abdicating responsibility doesn’t work. Although the marijuana lobby has hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around for lobbying (this is a failure in of itself) and many rightwingers’ brains have been poisoned by libertarianism, Trump can and should show leadership on this issue. President Trump personally abstains from drug and alcohol because of his brother’s struggle with addiction. Rescheduling marijuana is guaranteed to push hundreds of thousands more people down that terrible path.

Reject the rescheduling of marijuana. Even keeping the very flawed status quo would be far preferable to dumping billions of dollars into businesses that make Americans sick. This is one of those things that everyone knows on some level is bad but that society seems to have collectively lost the language to oppose. It’s time to say “Stop.” It’s not worth the money. We don’t need more drugs. We don’t need more shithole places. We don’t need more people wandering through life in an altered state.

I encourage everyone reading this to contact the White House using this link and leave a short comment explaining that you oppose rescheduling marijuana. Marijuana industry lobbyists have a lot of polling to point to that says the public has largely surrendered on this issue. People who oppose this terrible change need to show that they care. We don’t have to live like this.