On Tuesday, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced that it would be reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Experts say the move further confuses the legal status of the drug and does not acknowledge the serious health risks associated with its use that have already been established and continue to come to light.
In calling for the reclassification of marijuana from a Schedule I drug (which includes heroin, LSD, and other powerful psychoactive substances) to a Schedule III drug (which includes steroids, codeine, and ketamine), White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the reason behind the move is to further decriminalize the drug, because “no American who only possesses marijuana should go to jail.” But experts say the move won’t have an immediate impact on the criminal justice system. “Put simple, this move from Schedule I to Schedule III is not getting people out of jail,” David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council, told the Associated Press.
Observers say that the reclassification maintains marijuana’s status as a controlled substance but will make it easier for it to “be studied and researched to identify concrete medical benefits.” But as The Washington Post’s Robert Gebelhoff has pointed out, the reclassification did nothing to allow the federal government to properly regulate the drug amid the nation’s hodgepodge of state laws, which in some cases allow recreational use. “[Biden’s] proposal to reschedule the drug suggests he’s comfortable pretending that it is still illegal, providing no effective federal oversight,” Gebelhoff writes.
This is dangerous, Gebelhoff asserts, because “[t]he longer marijuana companies are allowed to escape federal regulation, the more dangerous the drug becomes. Growers are constantly cultivating the plant to make it more potent.” This has led to the current situation of the average marijuana plant having 10 times the amount of THC (main psychoactive ingredient) that the drug typically contained a few decades ago.
With the skyrocketing rates of THC has come vastly increased levels of addiction. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported last August that for “adults aged 19 to 30, the percentages of those reporting past-year marijuana use and daily marijuana use reached their highest levels ever reported” at 44%, and “past-year marijuana use among adults aged 35 to 50 also reached an all-time high in 2022 (28%).”
In addition, serious health consequences of using marijuana continue to come to light. A 2024 study by the National Institutes of Health found a sharp increase in cardiovascular disease linked to the drug, with daily use leading to a 25% increase in heart attack risk and 42% increase in stroke. Higher-potency cannabis also increases the risk of suffering from various psychoses, including depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
Numerous other studies show that these health consequences just scratch the surface of the adverse effects of marijuana use. The drug has been linked to host of societal ills, including high anxiety, memory loss, poor executive decision-making skills, and verbal learning, lower IQ, severe vomiting, fetal development issues, bronchitis, emphysema, and lung damage, more ER visits and hospitalizations, shorter life expectancy, lower income, worse relationships, and more prone to suffer physical abuse, and participation in human trafficking/slavery.
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens serves as the director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council. In comments to The Washington Stand, she was not surprised by the Biden administration’s marijuana reclassification.
“If you look at this administration from a wide-angle lens, everything that they do is contrary to what the research evidence is showing,” she observed. “When it comes to the trans issue, as everyone else is pulling back from it, review after review, leak after leak is backing up from it, what does this administration do? They buckle down and put in more [pro-trans] rules. With the marijuana issue, more and more evidence is coming out that the ‘medicinal benefits’ of marijuana have been greatly inflated.”
Bauwens went on to cite additional evidence that calls into question the wisdom of the administration’s actions.
“I just read one study that said in 2002, about 3.4% of women who were pregnant in California were found to have marijuana in their system,” she explained. “Now, it’s 30%. Before the legalization and acceptance of marijuana, you didn’t see it as often, but now almost a third of pregnancies in California show the presence of marijuana — it’s very frightening. Studies that are coming out show adverse effects in the offspring of those using marijuana, including autism, ADD [attention deficit disorder], psychotic-like experiences, thought and social problems, cognitive issues. As this evidence is coming out, now you have an administration that’s like, ‘Okay, now we’re going to say it’s less harmful.’”
As to Biden’s true motivation for classifying marijuana as less dangerous, Bauwens put forth a possible link to the effort to legalize psychedelic drugs. “Some of the research I’ve done in psychedelic drugs, it started with a group of people who wanted to make psychedelics legal,” she noted. “The person who wrote the playbook for making psychedelics legal included marijuana in that pathway. He wrote his dissertation on getting FDA approval for marijuana and psychedelics, and this has been in the works ever since the Nixon administration put marijuana under Schedule I. There have been efforts behind the scenes for a very long time to change the schedule of both marijuana and psychedelics.”
Bauwens, a licensed therapist who has extensive experience as a clinical psychologist and researcher, further pointed out that rescheduling marijuana as less dangerous can have serious consequences from a clinical perspective.
“From a clinical standpoint, it used to be that you would have somebody come to your office who wants help with substance abuse or has some addiction issues, and you could clearly say, ‘This is illegal,’” she reflected. “There’s a clear understanding that this is not good. You have a whole government system backing you up. Now, there have been studies showing clinicians are ambivalent because it’s no longer considered bad — everyone is doing it. There isn’t a clear understanding anymore, and I would say that’s probably true in some Christian circles, especially with new believers. It’s legal, so is it wrong?”
Bauwens continued, “[For] those who need an intervention, Biden’s reclassification is going to have a chilling effect on the intervention, and those who maybe wouldn’t have even touched it because it was considered illegal, their resistance is going to be lowered because it’s been sanctioned as okay, and in some circles even medicinal.”
Bauwens concluded by urging the Biden administration to reverse course on marijuana. “Instead of moving forward with lessening the classification, Biden should be looking at the fact that the THC levels are higher and more dangerous, and we should be sending out public messages highlighting that danger. There should be more warnings, not less.”
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
