Hitting war on drugs, Bernie Sanders says U.S. puts marijuana in same class as heroin

[neversickanymore]

Hitting war on drugs, Bernie Sanders says U.S. puts marijuana in same class as heroin
By Tom Kertscher on Friday, April 22nd

Campaigning for president in the liberal oasis of Madison, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont rose to the defense of marijuana.

Critical of the nation’s war on drugs, Sanders said the lives of millions of Americans have been "ruined" because they got a police record for possessing marijuana.

"Today, under the federal Controlled Substance Act, marijuana is listed in the same Schedule I as heroin. That is nuts," Sanders declared March 26, 2016, 10 days before he defeated Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary.

"Now people can argue -- although I suspect in this audience there may not be much of an argument -- about the pluses and minuses of marijuana," he said, drawing cheers from some of the thousands in attendance at the Alliant Energy Center. "But everybody knows marijuana is not a killer drug like heroin."

Sanders then noted he had introduced legislation to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substance Act because possession of it "should not be a federal crime."

We found that Sanders wasn’t smoking anything funny in claiming that both marijuana and heroin are Schedule I drugs, which he has continued to say while campaigning in New York and Pennsylvania.

But his claim is somewhat misleading: That classification is based on a drug’s acceptable medical use and the drug’s abuse or dependency potential, not on criminal statutes.

The law

The Controlled Substance Act, adopted in 1970, uses five schedules to classify drugs and narcotics by medical use and potential to incite substance abuse.

On the low end is Schedule V, which includes substances such as cough medicines with small amounts of the narcotic codeine.

At the high end is Schedule I, which lists the "most dangerous" drugs -- those that have "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse."

Marijuana is stronger than when the Controlled Substance Act was adopted (as ex-GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina correctly stated).

Nevertheless Schedule II includes some drugs often considered more dangerous than marijuana.

Here’s a look at some of the drugs in the two schedules:

cont http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin...g-war-drugs-bernie-sanders-says-us-puts-mari/

 

[Clocktower]

Eh, I'm getting really tired of rhetoric like this. The fact that he's saying X drug is good and Y drug is bad tells me that he's just pandering to his base and doesn't really understand the problem with prohibition. The science has been in for a while, stop blaming the drug war on the drugs or call me unimpressed.

 

[manboychef]

Eh, I'm getting really tired of rhetoric like this. The fact that he's saying X drug is good and Y drug is bad tells me that he's just pandering to his base and doesn't really understand the problem with prohibition. The science has been in for a while, stop blaming the drug war on the drugs or call me unimpressed.

QFT. I want action instead of words. I don't even smoke pot but I am just fed up with politicians and judges grandstanding at the cost of citizens well being and right to self govern. However, I am also sick of pro marijuana politicians pandering to people that feel that prohibition is bad. It is the time for action, not words. This "war on drugs" is nearly as bad a humanitarian nightmare as slavery was. The fact that American prohibition is based on racist/anti-anti-war citizens is a travesty. What is more of a travesty is all the citizens that believe that it wasn't based on that.