Marijuana. It’s a very controversial and heavily contested issue. This, however, isn’t an article about how “it’s 100% safe we promise” or how the ganja is the devil’s drug. No, I’m here to talk about how the regulations around Marijuana hurt both sides for almost no logical reason. Whether you are for or against or somewhere in between, most would say that having more accurate data to backup our claims about what the drug does is important. The problem, however, is regulation.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) classifies Marijuana as a Schedule One Controlled Substance. If you’re not familiar with pharmaceutical Schedule classifications, here’s a run down: the lower the number, the more “controlled” the substance is. To give this perspective, a Schedule One drug is almost impossible to get legally under any circumstances. Schedule two drugs, are very addictive or powerful drugs with medical uses, some examples are most high end opioids (Morphine, High strength pain pills). It also includes somethings most people would think of as street drugs not medical ones, like Cocaine and Methamphetamines.

But why is this important? Well, for a lot of reasons really, but I’m not here to talk about that. Why Marijuana being Schedule One is such an issue is because of the FDA’s explanation to why the it has such a high classification. To summarize a report, “we don’t know what it may do to us if we let scientists test the effects and side-effects”. If it wasn’t already obvious, the reason we can’t figure out what Marijuana does is because we don’t know what it does. This circular logic is toxic. We need to get over this simple taboo to actually get larger amounts of data for why it’s bad or good.