By James Lang
Anti-cannabis prohibition advocates received a huge shot in the arm from the nation’s largest doctors’ organization, as the American Medical Association called on the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a Schedule I narcotic.
While the AMA’s Nov. 10 resolution stopped short of endorsing state medical-cannabis programs, the move represented a stunning reversal of policy for the historically conservative group. The AMA played a key role in the criminalization of cannabis when members testified before Congress in support of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Since 1997, the 250,000-member organization had resisted a national trend toward relaxing marijuana prohibition, maintaining that cannabis should remain on the federal list of extremely harmful drugs.
But growing public acceptance of marijuana—13 states have medical-cannabis programs, and nearly as many more are considering adopting their own—and changing attitudes in the medical community appear to have made the AMA’s hard-line position untenable. Last year, the American College of Physicians shifted its own stance to support research into the medicinal benefits of cannabis.
In announcing its resolution, the AMA stated its goal was to encourage clinical research into marijuana potential as a therapeutic drug, development of cannabis-based medicines and the exploration of alternative methods of delivering THC.
“We definitely welcome this as a major step toward rationally addressing marijuana as a health care issue,” says Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, the nation’s largest medical-marijuana advocacy group. “I think it sends a strong message to the Obama administration that it ought to reconsider marijuana as a therapeutic substance and either reschedule it or, at the very minimum, establish a policy that allows anyone in the country who can benefit from it to use it.”
The U.S Drug Enforcement Agency and Food and Drug Administration use five levels, or schedules, to classify drugs according to their perceived benefits and potential for addiction. Schedule V drugs are considered the least dangerous, while Schedule I drugs are considered the most harmful, possessing no legitimate medical uses. As a Schedule I drug, cannabis is officially labeled as harmful as heroin and LSD and more harmful than cocaine and methamphetamine, which are Schedule II drugs.
Anti-marijuana prohibition activists have battled that label since the drug schedules were adopted nearly four decades ago.
“We’ve only been saying that marijuana should be rescheduled since ’72, when we filed a lawsuit over it,” says Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for California NORML. “I’m glad to see the AMA finally agrees with us on that.”
The AMA’s resolution has already affected how the federal government presents information on cannabis. On Nov. 17, just a week after the resolution was adopted, the DEA, under pressure from cannabis advocacy groups, updated its official website to remove several references to the AMA’s position on cannabis. The now-deleted references included the statements, “[T]he American Medical Association recommends that marijuana remain a Schedule I controlled substance,” and “[T]he American Medical Association has rejected pleas to endorse marijuana as medicine.”
Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in San Francisco, described the AMA resolution as a good first step.
“It’s not the resolution that we would have written if they’d asked—we obviously want them to go further,” he says. “But until now, the AMA’s position had been that, unequivocally, marijuana should be retained as a Schedule I drug. That provided
