Misplaced marijuana: rescheduling petition.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Citings - Brief article

SINCE 1970, when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, marijuana has been listed on Schedule I, which is supposedly reserved for drugs with a high abuse potential and no accepted medical value that cannot be used safely even under a doctor's supervision. Last October, for the first time in two decades, a federal appeals court heard arguments for moving marijuana into a less restrictive category.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) first challenged marijuana's legal status in 1972, eventually winning the support of the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief administrative law judge, Francis Young, who in 1991 declared it "abundantly clear" that the plant has "a currently accepted medical use." Young, who called marijuana "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man," was overruled by DEA Administrator John Lawn.

In 1995 former NORML National Director Jon Gettman filed a second rescheduling petition, focusing on marijuana's abuse potential. The DEA rejected that in 2001. The latest petition, filed a year later by a coalition of activists...