CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Differing opinions are coming from leaders and advocates in West Virginia regarding President Trump’s new executive order that reclassifies marijuana.
The order, which was signed on December 18, directs federal agencies to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I classification to a Schedule III classification. Schedule I is the most restrictive category under the Controlled Substances Act.
Drugs with accepted medical use and a lower potential for abuse typically fall under the Schedule III classification.
“This action has been requested by American patients suffering from extreme pain, incurable diseases, aggressive cancers, seizure disorders, neurological problems and more, including numerous veterans with service-related injuries, and older Americans who live with chronic medical problems that severely degrade their quality of life,” Trump said when he signed the order.
Erin DeLullo, host of “The Poisoning” podcast, believes Trump got this reclassification wrong.
“Once you use it once and then you want it again, you’re looking for the next high. It’s the same thing when you think of heroine to fentanyl,” DeLullo said on MetroNews Talkline. “Once you start using, you want more and more and more, so the people selling to you want to get you hooked and chasing that next buzz.”
DeLullo maintains that Trump bought into what cannabis lobbyists were saying.
“This is about money,” she said. “When you were a Schedule I drug, you could not take certain tax deductions. Now they are going to as a Schedule III, and some of these businesses sadly were donors to the president’s inaugural committee. They have been lobbying him very, very hard on this. There’s a lot of money in it, just like tobacco.”
She says the next generation will be the ones hurt the most by the executive order.
“Who pays the consequences in society? It’s going to be the state and our families and our children,” said DeLullo. “There’s going to be a lot of freed up money in the marijuana industry to target our kids with social media advertising, direct advertising, texting, you name it. That’s a big problem to me.”
Meanwhile, chairman of the West Virginia Libertarian Party Taylor Richmond is looking at another angle. He says tax revenues from marijuana will help American cities.
“The tax revenue from the recreational use of marijuana has definitely provided a base of support for a number of government agencies, which I don’t support, but it provides some benefits to those areas and offsets a number of pension deficits that are causing cities like Pittsburgh — who is facing a $25 billion deficit — to be able to offset some of those problems of mismanagement and corruption.”
He says he’s not a fan of the recreational use of marijuana, but strict government restrictions haven’t been working.
“It’s a substance — just like alcohol is and just like tobacco is — that has its negative effects. I’m not promoting the use of marijuana, just the fact that prohibition on it is a negative on society much more than the use of it is,” Richmond said.
“We saw it earlier in the 1900’s with alcohol and we see it now with the war on drugs. It has not solved the problem that it was intended to solve, just like most problems the government sets out to solve never gets solved, but gets worse,” he continued.