UrsineApathy [none/use any]

Oh shit, thanks for letting me know. Funny enough, I even tried to download the pdf, but mistook that “download without registration” as a heading for their marketing section!

I could only get the abstract for the article, but the linked brief is likely more than enough. You’re right that intense pressure could have been out on the agencies to expedite the process, specifically, the Attorney General, FDA, and DEA heads are all appointed positions and can be removed from office with relative ease, but that move would come at a heavy cost.

The subtext though is that it’s not a priority for him besides being a campaign bullet point, which you’ve already touched on plenty and I agree with. Rescheduling doesn’t redeem anything in my eyes, but I’m not going to look down on positive progress when it happens. So make sure to 420blazeit and celebrate.

I get the frustration, but in this case I think it’s a little unfair. Our archaic drugs laws are dictated by the Controlled Substances Act and the only two avenues to update the schedule status are a formal DEA review or an act of Congress. The latter clearly has no legitimate interest beyond political grandstanding so the other possible path to change was used. He took the most effective route in this case.

The vast majority of our legislators are not there because they want to make the world a better place. They’re there to further their own self interests and most political dealings work on a quid pro quo arrangement. Forcing a DEA review cost almost nothing politically. The real problem is that this extremely popular action that was unnecessarily harming a lot of fucking people even required executive action at all instead of being addressed 30 years ago by actual legislation.

Not really though. Executive orders can easily be tied up and overturned in court. If Congress isn’t willing to sign legislation to reschedule it, there will absolutely be enough opposition to overturn any blanket order. He essentially did sign an executive order for this, but it was to order the HHS review and do it the slow way.

He recommended the HHS (overarching org of the FDA) reevaluate the schedule status of it back in October '22. The HHS took like a year to do their thing and then made a recommendation to the DEA to change it to schedule III. The rest of the time from them until now was the DEA also doing their own internal review.

I feel like if the timing was political, they would have pushed this news out to late summer closer to the election. That’s not even considering the fact that a simple majority in Congress could have done the same damn thing without any of this beurocracy.