President Biden lied when campaigning for medical marijuana

President Joe Biden spoke a big game on marijuana reform during his campaign. It turns out, however, that, in keeping with one sleazy politician’s job description, none of his pro-pot promises were of substance. Biden said ahead of the 2020 election that he was all for expanding cannabis research and legalizing medical marijuana. However, his administration was just about to oppose a bill that would force the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to launch clinical trials examining the benefits of veterinarians using cannabis to tame PTSD and chronic pain.

A handful of veteran bills were released earlier this week discussed by a US Senate committee. One such measure was designed to study medical marijuana for military veterans. However, a written statement from the VA’s Acting Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Health, Mark Upton, shows the Biden government is not in favor of such a move.

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Upton claims that the VA is already doing enough to study the medical benefits of cannabis for veterans and that the proposal made by Chairman Jon Tester and Senator Dan Sullivan “is redundant in that the VA is already addressing the risks and benefits of cannabis the treatment examined “. PTSD and Chronic Pain. ”The medical marijuana study Upton is referring to looks at“ CBD for the treatment of PTSD, using CBD as an adjunct to standard psychotherapy ”. Upton says the results of this research should be available sometime in 2022.

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The thoughtful opposition of the Biden administration to the investigation of medical marijuana for veterinarians is interesting considering the Democratic Party supports these ideas. The democratic platform expressly declares that they “decriminalize marijuana use and re-plan it through action by the executive branch at the federal level” and “support the legalization of medical marijuana”. But the first 100 days are over, and we still haven’t seen any semblance of cannabis reform in the executive branch. Even Vice President Kamala Harris admits, “We haven’t adopted that yet.”

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Look, Biden doesn’t need Congress to get serious about medical marijuana research. He only has to instruct the head of the Department of Health and Social Affairs get the ball rolling about the marijuana rescheduling process. That way, cannabis could quickly become a Category II drug instead of the current List I – something Biden claims to support – and place the herb in a drug classification with a medicinal function.

Under Biden’s direction, the HHS and the Justice Department would jointly downgrade the list of the cannabis plant on the schedule. The move wouldn’t legalize marijuana; it would just make it easier to research the plant’s pros and cons and give it a fair chance of becoming a regulated drug under state control.

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But if the Biden administration isn’t even ready to allow the VA to conduct research, there’s a good chance medical marijuana isn’t on the president’s radar. At the moment, the fate of federal cannabis reform doesn’t seem promising. Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to handle statewide legalization, Republican obstruction is likely to stand in the way.

To this end, Schumer and Biden seem to get different results when it comes to cannabis. You want it completely legal; the other supports the ending of criminal penalties. It remains to be seen how the two will come to terms with grass when it finally takes center stage. All we know is medical marijuana right now, and all research will stagnate for a while.