This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 1st,

2004. I'm Caleb Brown. It seems likely that DEA will reschedule cannabis,

removing it from a category of drugs deemed by the

agency to have low medical value and a high potential for abuse.

That will make it easier for Americans to receive cannabis for medical reasons and allow more research.

But that move still represents a federal regulatory agency making big decisions about your

ability to seek certain medical treatment.

Cato's Jeff Singer comments.

This is, I guess, an uncomfortable position in a way for libertarians who have a particular view of how the government ought to proceed with

cannabis, this is not the end of cannabis prohibition. Is that right? That's correct

it just means that if you get a permission slip

from a licensed health care practitioner, licensed by the state,

then you can get some cannabis for medicinal uses and otherwise if you want to

recreational use cannabis it's still against the law you can still get arrested

you can still go to prison.

Of course, the states and feds differ in how they treat cannabis, but one thing is important to note here,

Schedule 1 is a determination made by a federal regulatory agency that a particular chemical or in this case a plant has low potential for therapy. a made as I said by a regulatory agency.

Well in fact the regulatory agency is a law enforcement agency.

What I call cops practicing medicine.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is empowered to add or remove drugs from a schedule that it creates of controlled substances,

substances that it oversees, you know, the consumption and distribution of. It relies on advice from the

Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, which

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