URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n577/a05.html
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Votes: 0
Pubdate: Tue, 23 Aug 2016
Source: Rome News-Tribune (GA)
Copyright: 2016 Rome News-Tribune
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Website: http://www.romenews-tribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1716
Author: Spencer Lahr

LOCALS WEIGH IN ON POT CATEGORY

The DEA announces it will keep marijuana on the list of most dangerous drugs.

In the eyes of the U.S.  Drug Enforcement Administration, marijuana is still considered dangerous enough to remain among the likes of heroin, LSD, and ecstasy as a Schedule I drug.

Ever since The Controlled Substances Act became law in 1970, marijuana has been deemed to have no medicinal benefits and a high likelihood of abuse.  And despite over half the states in the U.S.  legalizing medical or recreational marijuana in some form, the DEA announced this month that marijuana wouldn’t be declassified.

Dr.  James Craig, a physician and addictionologist at Highland Rivers Health, said he believes marijuana doesn’t match the features of a dangerous drug.

Craig said Schedule I drugs make users dependent on the influence of the drug and they build up a tolerance to it.  As their tolerance-level grows they use more and more, which can lead to deadly results.

“Having marijuana in a classification with heroin …  doesn’t really make a lot of sense,” he said.  “I don’t think it’s a helpful system.  It may be wellmeaning, but it’s a naive place to put it.”

For most people, Craig said, marijuana isn’t a danger and doesn’t pose a risk of becoming habitforming.

“Normal people can smoke marijuana and it’s a relatively benign substance because they’re not really going to crave it a second time – – or they use marijuana like nonalcoholics drink,” he said.

Advances in addiction medicine, Craig continued, indicate the cause of addiction is “a dopamine deficiency and dopamine-processing problem in the brain stem.”

Addicts may use marijuana to make up for their lack of dopamine – a chemical in the body – Craig added, and they can abuse it.  However, addicts will more likely turn to harder drugs that provide more dopamine.

Rome-Floyd Metro Task Force Commander Barry McElroy also sees differences between marijuana and other Schedule I drugs.

“I don’t think a person who is smoking weed is anywhere close to someone using harder drugs,” McElroy said.

But regardless of how the DEA classifies marijuana, McElroy said he simply focuses on enforcing the current laws, and marijuana is illegal.

As part of their announcement, DEA officials opened up the possibility of more research on the potential medicinal benefits of marijuana.  If benefits are proven, it could instigate a declassification of the drug.

State Sen.  Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, believes that, with more research on the drug, the DEA will change its decision.

“I do think they are continuing to do promising research on it,” said Hufstetler, who is an anesthetist at a local hospital.  “When some of that research is completed, it will probably be moved to Schedule II.”

According to the DEA website, Schedule II drugs also have a high potential

for abuse and use could lead to “severe psychological or physical dependence.” The difference from Schedule I drugs is that they have a medical purpose.

Cocaine, methamphetamine and OxyContin are included in the list of Schedule II drugs.

Historically, marijuana has been labeled as a gateway drug, postulating the potential dangers the drug can cause.  But for Craig, who works with patients who’ve taken the road to abusing harder drugs, marijuana doesn’t have such qualities.

“You do see a lot of people who are eventually going to develop substance abuse disorders with more dangerous drugs starting with marijuana.  But it’s a temporal relationship, it’s not a causal relationship,” he said.

“The typical story I’m going to hear is ‘I was 13 years old and I started with marijuana, then I went to alcohol, then I went to pills then to heroin,'” Craig added.  “If you remove marijuana from the equation, the equation doesn’t fall apart.  They would have just started somewhere else.”

That being said, Craig doesn’t condone the widespread use of marijuana and doesn’t make calls for its legalization.

Craig said her feels the discussion on how marijuana – or any other drug – should be classified misses the mark on the real issue.

“You’ve got a country that consumes 80 percent of the world’s supply of opiates and we’re asking questions about marijuana,” Craig said.  “We’ve got six people an hour in this country dying from inadvertent opiate overdose.”

Instead of trying to find medical benefits of marijuana, Craig said, there should be a shift of focus to providing timely treatment to people suffering from addiction to drugs.

“What we know about addiction medicine now is that it’s a true brainbased illness …  ( and ) classifying addiction as a drug problem is like classifying diabetes as a Snickers bar problem,” he concluded. 


MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom