Steve DeAngelo on the DEA’s Recent Ruling
Categories: Health & Healing Society & Politics
The Drug Enforcement Administration recently rejected a proposal to reclassify marijuana—meaning, at least at the federal level, it will continue to face the same restrictions as heroin and LSD. Chuck Rosenberg, the chief of the DEA stated: “This decision isn’t based on danger. This decision is based on whether marijuana, as determined by the FDA, is a safe and effective medicine, and it’s not.”
Steve DeAngelo, the founder and CEO of the world’s largest medical cannabis dispensary and author of The Cannabis Manifesto, had this to say in response:
The DEA’s refusal to reschedule cannabis—in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of its medical efficacy—is absurd and heartless. Millions of American patients have been condemned to a horrible choice of continuing to suffer or breaking the law to get the medicine they need. It is sad that the agency has once again decided to cook the books with bogus “science” that it bought and paid for.
The only possible explanation for this travesty is the DEA’s desire to preserve bloated drug war budgets and militarized policing like we saw in Ferguson. One viewing of the dozens of videos of children with intractable epilepsy being treated with cannabis makes its therapeutic power immediately evident.
Apparently the DEA either lacks access to YouTube, or the decency to consider the misery they are inflicting on millions of their fellow citizens.
The cannabis reform movement will never back down. Our own lives and health, and the lives and health of our families and neighbors, are at stake. We are sick and tired of a broken health care system that foists dangerous pharmaceuticals upon us while denying us the safest and most therapeutic of medicines.
We will not rest and we will not stop until the last cannabis prisoner is free.
Steve DeAngelo
Executive Director of Harborside Health Centers
President of ArcView Group
National Cannabis Industry Association Board Member
Want to find out more about the history of marijuana restriction, its medical uses, and the many benefits its legalization would offer communities? Check out this infographic to get more info!
Tags: Cannabis Steve DeAngelo
About the Author
Marina Snyder
Marina is the Marketing & Digital Programs Coordinator at North Atlantic Books. After living in New Orleans and Amsterdam, and exploring a couple of continents, she returned to the San Francisco Bay Area to work at NAB. She's passionate about astrology, nonfiction books, and sustainable living, as well as all things metaphysical.
