>The DEA won't have any choice but move MDMA from schedule 1 to a lower schedule, as schedule 1 is defined as "no currently accepted medical use in the United States".
The DEA has demonstrated pretty clearly that it doesn't give a rat's ass what the medical community thinks about a substance if the DEA has decided it doesn't want to remove it from Schedule 1 classification
Well, that depends on whether CI is a logical AND, or a logical OR. No accepted medical use AND high potential for abuse? Or can it be "any of the above"?
21 U.S.C § 812[0] doesn't say anything at all except to give the list of findings:
> (A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
> (B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
> (C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
This is a little surprising because the "trailing AND/OR" is fairly common in other areas of the law. Makes me wonder if it's ever been clarified in court.
There is some precedent for having a single active ingredient listed in multiple schedules though, the one that immediately comes to mind is hydrocodone.
Until very recently, we listed hydrocodone in both CII and CIII, depending on which other active ingredients it was combined with.
If it was in a pill loaded with acetaminophen, which would supposedly deter addicts from eating 20 of them at a time, it could be in CIII, otherwise it was strictly CII. Because naturally, anyone getting ready to swallow 20 Vicodin at a time is going to know that acetaminophen can cause acute liver failure and make the rational choice to avoid it.
That was one of the primary reasons Vicodin has been handed out like skittles for every little injury, it's every bit as powerful as the others in CII, but it could be prescribed with less oversight.
In that light it's not too surprising to have GHB listed in more than one schedule, but it's still absurd that one of them is CI, given that as far as I'm aware, there is nothing particularly abuse-resistant about Xyrem.
> No accepted medical use AND high potential for abuse?
That is Schedule II.
21 U.S.C § 812.b states:
(2) Schedule II.—
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions.
(C) Abuse of the drug or other substances may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.
Probably that it's prosecuted as Schedule I if you don't have a prescription, or maybe that you just made it in your kitchen. I heard someone describe how easy it is to make just last week.
The DEA has demonstrated pretty clearly that it doesn't give a rat's ass what the medical community thinks about a substance if the DEA has decided it doesn't want to remove it from Schedule 1 classification