Earlier this month, President Donald Trump stated his administration is weighing whether to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Such a move, according to Fox News – removing marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances and making it a Schedule III drug – "would make it significantly easier to buy and sell cannabis and make the industry more profitable."
Luke Niforatos of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) is highly critical of such a move, noting that Chinese cartels have been found to be involved in the U.S. marijuana trade.
"People are getting killed in the business of marijuana right now, and it's not just the illicit places," he tells AFN. "It's the state-licensed regulated marijuana establishments. The states are totally failing at regulating this across the country. So, it's no laughing matter in terms of the business of it."
According to Niforatos, the drug has been "totally supercharged and genetically modified" to be much more dangerous than what people were using in recent decades or generations.
"What we're seeing now are products that usually, on average, were 1% to 3% potency a few decades ago [are] now … up to 99% potent. We're talking about a drug that is 30 times harder than it was just a few decades ago," he exclaims – adding that makes it much more addictive.
"Now the research is showing us that for the people who use these high-potency products, they are five times-plus more likely to develop schizophrenia or psychosis from the regular use of these drugs," he adds. "So, it is much more deleterious to your mental health now than it ever was."
Pew Research Center says the "vast majority" of Americans now support legalizing marijuana in some way. "Around nine-in-ten U.S. adults say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use (54%) or that it should be legal for medical use only (33%)," Pew reports. Another 12% say the drug should not be legal at all.
Niforatos says people need to know more about marijuana and its negative impacts. "It's not your mama's marijuana anymore. This is a new, very high-octane drug that is much more dangerous," he warns.
SAM urges Trump to consider the fact that no major law enforcement association supports rescheduling marijuana to III, describing it as "a public safety and public health nightmare."
