Decriminalize drugs and defund the DEA 👍
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Abolish the DEA.
Deschedule cannabis & mushrooms.
They are now seeing how profitable the plant is, so they want to change the narrative. Don't be fooled.
Edit: The reclassification will just put the plant in its due place, before its reputation was tarnished by the war on drugs.
Bro they will never let homies grow at home tho opium i mean
If we're actually following the scheduling guidelines, can we do psychedelics next?
I mean, they probably will. They've got to offer fucking something other than "I'm not a literal fascist who will black bag and torture you like Trump." It's not particularly effective to be like "I know your lives are fucking terrible out there, but I'm not gonna do a god damned thing to really improve them, because why should I have to, my opponent is fucking bonkers and I'm going to hold him over your head abusively, dangling him as a threat that you'll be punished under unless you vote for me."
Far easier to threaten us with the spectre of fascism than actually fucking do anything to improve things or, you know, stop fascism. However, enough folks in the Democratic party are waking up to the public not actually responding well to this abuse, and see that they're enabling fascism to be able to lean on it as a danger that only they can thwart. So they gotta start giving something, and drugs are an easy one.
I forgot the exact details but that's slowly becoming a reality in the states. I think the FDA was re reviewing mushrooms for use fighting against PTSD
DEA: Ok, it's reclassified.
Indiana: Cool. We'll make it 5 years in prison for smoking a joint.
I hate this state.
Wisconsin is gonna be the last state to legalize because we're the Alabama of the fucking north. Your 5th DUI probably has lesser consequences than getting caught holding here.
You're the Alabama of the north? Have you ever heard the Hoosier accent? And both Dan Quayle and Mike Pence come from Indiana. Also, we once tried to legislate pi. And not to the correct value of pi.
Lol fair points, tho we do have quite an accent up here dontchyaknow? But I guess you have Gary, IN too and all we have is a bunch of serial killers.
The states surrounding Indiana:
Can the DEA even reclassify drugs? All the DEA could do, in theory, is decriminalise and not prosecute - which they're kind of doing already.
It's up to Congress to write laws. Maybe the FDA, in this case.
It's really bizarre the cops and bureaucrats apparently get to decide law to this extent.
Well get used to it as the Supreme Court has begun to lay down the precedent needed to completely do away with Chevron deference.
In other words, they're doing away with the authority that gives federal regulatory agencies their purview to set regulations. You know, the public servants who have dedicated their lives/educations/careers/etc. to a field of study?
They're replacing those decisions with ones made by judges and politicians.
I much prefer "bureaucrats" (literally just another word for those public servants) make those decisions rather than billionaires and politicians.
good. Enforcement should not decide law. that is a clear conflict of interest, in their favor. For an extreme example, you absolutely don't want a police officer deciding citizen's rights.
I'm not sure I understand. Do you mind explaining your position?
I'm guessing they mean the DEA shouldn't both decide drug classification and enforce those same classifications.
That can be fixed by other means, though, such as by giving the FDA classification rights that the DEA then enforces. Killing Chevron deference would only make things worse; the court now gets to decide and enforce.
The flip side is that more progressive judges can also second guess decisions. EPA says that PFAS is fine and we're not going to regulate it? The court could step in on that. FCC says net neutrality doesn't need to exist? The court could step in on that.
Killing Chevron only makes sense for conservatives if they think they will own the courts indefinitely. They probably thought they would during the Trump Administration, but he lost the last election, and the Supreme Court massively overstepped with abortion rights and caused their side a whole bunch of new problems. They may not be so sure of their ability to capture the judicial system as they were a few years back. A lot depends on how the next election pans out.
It has some trade-offs, the same rules allow the DEA and ATF to make rules but also allows things like the EPA to function. It really is a double edged sword.
Your comparison is EPA, so for drugs, a health issue, it should be a health agency. DEA is law enforcement. It’s letting cops decide policy when it should be an agency of subject matter experts writing evidenced-based policy.
I'm just saying it's the same rules that give them the power to decide on enforcement. Also all of them are enforcement agencies. The EPA does have federal agents that have the power to arrest. The EPA decided to have less cops in their agency because it is not the nature of their agency. The DEA and ATF decided to have more cops in their agencies because it is the nature of their agency.
Sounds like a problem with their specific implementations rather than the rules that allow them to exist. I wonder if competent legislation could fix that.
Yeah the main trade off is federal organizations have become so determinate that pretty soon, and it's come close already, they're just gonna support a dictator enable their internal politics.
This just isn't true. Federal agencies are made up of regular people who work a regular job for mediocre pay, and a dictator is much more likely to do away with that job (or even worse, as we've seen historically. Purges aren't just a fun way of saying "vacation").
Republicans have even said in the recent past (Rick Perry comes to mind, but pretty sure Trump has said similar) that they will do away with major regulatory agencies if they're elected (such as FDA, EPA, DOE, etc). What do you think happens to all of those workers when a Republican decides to shut down their agency? They're out of a job.
So no, they don't support it. They just don't really have any say in it either way.
You've never talked to a cop.
I don't give a fuck about cops.
The federal government is the largest employer in the US. What % of those do you think are cops?
Cops make up s very small percentage of government employees.
Doesn't matter, that was just an example. People get "institutionalized" in both government and corporate positions, the difference is the corporate ones have little power over the general public, next thing you know you have government representatives running around trying to make peoples lives hell for making clotted cream. If that sounds like a weird example, it is, definitely.
Criminalization is a multi-million dollar industry and greed is more powerful than our laws.
Million? Bro it's a 7.4 BILLION dollar industry.
Hey if this happens does anyone know how this will affect drug testing for work? Employers are private entities obviously but a lot only drug test due to federal regulation or contract compliance.
I assume that companies would still drug test for weed. It's still a controlled substance with reclassification. They may be less likely to do so, but this wouldn't stop it from occurring.
This is why it's also important to ensure doctors can prescribed weed as a medicine. It forces companies to accept weed as a medical accommodation for most positions.
Even so, but for most non critical jobs, it really shouldn't be a problem if an employee smokes off the clock or not. They don't say shit when every office worker is sloshed from 5:30 onward.
US health officials ask DEA to jeopardize their own jobs
The DEA has basically ignored cannabis for years now. Opioids will keep them employed, don't worry.
Exactly. They're basically asking them to do something the DEA can't do - change the law. What the DEA can do is prioritise what they're prosecuting and decriminalise weed, which they more or less unofficially have been doing for a few years now.
Abolish the DEA, legalize all drugs, and put education/treatment programs in place to help people. Repair lives instead of destroying them. That should always be the goal.