Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the medical marijuana advocacy group based in Oakland, has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court to get pot reclassified as a non-dangerous drug.
The group previously brought a suit against the DEA challenging the classification of marijuana as a "schedule 1" drug alongside heroin and LSD, as a broad effort to set the stage for legalization of marijuana for medical use. A D.C. Circuit Court ruled against the ASA in January saying, essentially, that the jury was still out on the medical use of the drug and not enough research had occurred yet.
The "schedule 1" distinction dates back to the Nixon-era Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, and it classifies various psychotropics, hallucinogens, and opiates including pot, GHB, LSD, and MDMA as all having a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.
The ASA argues, fairly, that there are now a wide range of accepted medical uses for marijuana, and that three out of four doctors polled by the New England Journal of Medicine this past May said that they would recommend marijuana as part of treatment for a hypothetical breast cancer patient. Also they argue that it's inappropriate to classify marijuana as a "schedule 1" drug when other more dangerous drugs like cocaine and oxycodone are listed as "schedule 2," because they have accepted medical applications. There's also a weirdness in the classification system in that GHB is "schedule 1" but pharmeceutical-grade GHB, under the name Xyrem, is "schedule 3," which is the same for THC/marijuana when sold in pill form as Marinol.
It remains to be seen if SCOTUS will take the case, and our guess is they won't.
