By Anthony Martinelli for The Weed Blog
In less than a month, a Change.org petition calling on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to stop lying about medical cannabis has received over 85,000 signatures. The petition was started by Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a nonprofit organization working to increase access to medical cannabis across the United States.
The petition was a response to a recent internal DEA code clarification that gave CBD it’s own tracking code. A switch that threw the legal marijuana industry into a frenzy over what the legal ramifications of the new code means. Check out our earlier post on whether or not the DEA made CBD a Schedule 1 drug for more information on the topic.
“Many people don’t know that it is illegal for federal agencies to disseminate incorrect information”, the petition begins. “But when it comes to medical cannabis, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been doing this for years — and politicians use this misinformation to justify opposition to medical cannabis laws.”
ASA notes that federal and state lawmakers utilize DEA information on cannabis to make decisions regarding their stance on medical cannabis legislation. “That’s why we constantly see politicians using the DEA’s claims about the gateway theory, long-term brain damage, and psychosis to deny support for medical cannabis”, the petition states.
Last week filed a separate petition with the Department of Justice demanding that the DEA immediately update misinformation about cannabis.
“The DEA has actually admitted that the theories that cannabis use leads to harder drugs (gateway theory), long-term brain damage, psychosis, and other alleged harms, are not based in scientific fact, and yet they keep distributing this false information”, says ASA. “[W]e have found 25 instances of these false claims on their website.”
Th petition ends by saying that; “Forcing the DEA to correct this misinformation would give medical cannabis patients and the families the ability to say, unequivocally, “That is not based in scientific fact, and the DEA has admitted that as well,” effectively removing these falsehoods from the conversation.”
For those wanting to sign the petition, it can be found on Change.org by clicking here.
