On Friday, a letter from the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency tasked with crafting policy to keep us global citizens healthy and alive, circulated among media. It appears the WHO is ready to issue a long-awaited recommendation on its own marijuana policy \u2014 and that recommendation is the rescheduling of cannabis and \u201cits key components.\u201d But the timing and unofficial nature of the recommendation\u2019s announcement has led some to believe there\u2019s more to this story than meets the eye.<\/p>\n
The WHO\u00a0recommends<\/a>\u00a0the UN remove \u201ccannabis and cannabis resin\u201d from Schedule IV classification while remaining under the Schedule I classification. It also recommends \u201ccannabidiol preparations\u201d and anything with \u201cpure cannabidiol,\u201d or CBD, be removed from international drug-control treaties entirely.<\/p>\n Unlike the U.S. drug classifications under the\u00a0Controlled Substances Act<\/a>, in which the strictest controls are on drugs (including cannabis) in Schedule I, the UN\u2019s list of most dangerous drugs is called Schedule IV, a list established in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.<\/p>\n So cannabis, currently listed\u00a0in the same category as heroin<\/a>\u00a0in the UN\u2019s list of the world\u2019s most dangerous drugs, should not in fact be there, according to the\u00a0Jan. 24 letter<\/a>\u00a0from WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, sent to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.<\/p>\n If adopted by the UN\u2019s member nations, those same nations would in effect admit that they \u201chave effectively been wrong about marijuana\u2019s harms and therapeutic benefits for decades,\u201d according to an\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0from Marijuana Moment\u2019s Tom Angell.<\/u><\/p>\n That\u2019s good! But less good is the fact that such a recognition would not necessarily cancel the 1961 treaty, compliance with which has been repeatedly cited by federal agencies, including the DEA, as justification for continuing the federal-level war on marijuana.<\/p>\n Even worse is the logical trick the WHO appears to be playing on itself \u2014 one that, according to an analysis from drug-policy expert Steve Rolles, would allow member states to still pursue draconian marijuana policies for purely political reasons.<\/p>\n 7. In other words, the recommendation is that cannabis is still scheduled alongside in the catagory for highest risks of abuse \u2013 alongside cocaine, heroin and fentanyl.<\/p>\n This is very bad news \u2013 because it gives WHO scientific endorsement to a self-evidently bullshit assertion<\/p>\n \u2014 Steve Rolles (@SteveTransform) February 1, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n As Rolles explained in a Twitter thread after several outlets published the WHO letter, buried in the WHO recommendations is an assertion that cannabis should remain scheduled internationally, and not for scientific reasons.<\/p>\n While admitting that cannabis is not \u201cassociated with the same level of risk to health\u201d as other drugs on the UN list, the WHO did say it \u201cnoted the high rates of public health problems arising from cannabis use and the global extent of such problems.\u201d<\/p>\n So \u201c[t]he \u2018global extent of the problem\u2019 \u2013 ie lots of people use cannabis \u2013 is not a reason to ignore their risk assessment and mis-schedule it,\u201d Rolles tweeted. \u201cIt is anti-science. It almost feels like there has been political interference. Has there been?\u201d<\/p>\n According to\u00a0rumors<\/a>\u00a0at the UN heard by Tolles, some member states have been pressuring WHO officials to keep marijuana under the strictest controls possible. This could explain both the twisted reasoning outlined above and why an\u00a0earlier announcement<\/a>\u00a0of findings on marijuana were delayed.<\/p>\n As Marijuana Business Daily\u00a0pointed out<\/a>, member states in the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, who are scheduled to meet in March, were supposed to have received this expert advice from the WHO in December. Now that it\u2019s February, those states may now push for a delay in any rescheduling move for another full year.<\/p>\n Why does any of this matter? Functionally, it might not, or at least not all that much: Canadian marijuana companies are happily shipping cannabis and cannabis preparations to UN member states like Australia and Israel without much issue.<\/p>\n But if Tolles\u2019s hunches are true and there are member states of the UN unhappy with an international trade in the drug, it could signal complications in the\u00a0global market<\/a>\u00a0down the road.<\/p>\n At the very least, the delays, the odd timing and the convoluted logic require explanation \u2014 at least, if they are not to be interpreted as proof that the international conversation around marijuana is still political, rather than scientific.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think the WHO\u2019s recommendation will be good for global cannabis policy?<\/p>\n The post The Hidden Problem with the WHO\u2019s Reclassification of Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
On Friday, a letter from the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency tasked with crafting policy to keep us global citizens healthy and alive, circulated among media. It appears the WHO is ready to issue a long-awaited recommendation on its own marijuana policy \u2014 and that recommendation is theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,7495,119,3329,978,7470,7507,6207,667,7508,1221,1173],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32694,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32693\/revisions\/32694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Rescheduling Recommended<\/h4>\n
Who\u2019s Behind the Curtain?<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The Hidden Problem with the WHO\u2019s Reclassification of Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"