Process
Cannabis could be rescheduled either legislatively, through Congress, or through the executive branch. Congress has so far rejected all bills to reschedule cannabis. However, it is not unheard of for Congress to intervene in the drug scheduling process; in February 2000, for instance, the 105th Congress, in its second official session, passed Public Law 106-172, also known as the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reed Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000, adding GHB to Schedule I. On June 23, 2011, Rep. Barney Frank and Rep. Ron Paul introduced H.R. 2306, legislation that would completely remove cannabis from the federal schedules, limiting the federal government's role to policing cross-border or interstate transfers into states where it remains illegal.
The Controlled Substances Act also provides for a rulemaking process by which the United States Attorney General can reschedule cannabis administratively. These proceedings represent the only means of legalizing medical cannabis without an act of Congress. Rescheduling supporters have often cited the lengthy petition review process as a reason why cannabis is still illegal. The first petition took 22 years to review, and the second took 7 years. In 2002, the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis filed a third petition.
Read more about this topic: Removal Of Cannabis From Schedule I Of The Controlled Substances Act
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“A designer who is not also a couturier, who hasn’t learned the most refined mysteries of physically creating his models, is like a sculptor who gives his drawings to another man, an artisan, to accomplish. For him the truncated process of creating will always be an interrupted act of love, and his style will bear the shame of it, the impoverishment.”
—Yves Saint Laurent (b. 1936)
“I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)