Schedule 1 Lunacy and Montana Weed

One group of hyper-conservative prohibitionists, going by the moniker of SafeMontana, illustrate yet another problem with roots in the irrational Schedule 1 status of cannabis.

The group has been seeking to get signatures to put Initiative 174 (which would make all Schedule 1 substances illegal in Montana) on the ballot.

The mission statement from SafeMontana’s website states: “The initiative would eliminate the current disparity between federal law and state law with respect to the legal status of the possession and use of marijuana. Federal Illegal Drugs are being presented in Montana as medicine and are too easily secured through green cards.”

Supporters of I-174 seem content to put absolute faith in the FDA, which is troubling in its own way. The FDA did, after all, rush Zohydro through trials and into production (but pillified heroin is WAY safer than cannabis, right?).

“If there’s anything good about a Schedule One drug, whether it be marijuana or one of the other ones, then we need to take it to the FDA and get it switched,” Montana car salesman and staunch supporter of I-174, Steve Zabawa, stated, “We don’t want to be legalizing any illegal drugs.”

However, they do a passable job of elucidating the elephant in the room and, perhaps, reveal a nugget of common sense buried in their prohibitionist mindset. They imply that, if there is “good” in the substance, then the substance should not be on Schedule 1.

Therein lies the conundrum. The root cause of so, so many of the legal, financial, and social problems that are part of the package with cannabis legalization would all but evaporate overnight with a simple re-sheduling. And don’t be fooled, there are a few people in D.C. right now who could get this done quickly, not the least of which is President Obama.

Proponents of Montana’s medical marijuana industry (with a patient count of roughly 8,500) like Chris Lindsey, who works with both the Marijuana Policy Project and the Montana chapter of NORML, argued against Zabawa’s idea of establishing pot laws that coincide with federal policy.

“Marijuana prohibition has been just as ineffective, inefficient and problematic as alcohol prohibition,” said Lindsey. “It’s a colossal failure. And Steve wants to be the champion of that failure.”

I think, empirically, what SafeMontana is reaching for is a good thing. They want to keep illicit drugs out of their state. And, since most illicit drugs can and do cause terrible harm, keeping them out of your state is an admirable goal. However, the argument that cannabis belongs in Schedule 1 is more worn out than the elbows in my dead grandfather’s church jacket.

Cocaine? Heroin? Other drugs than can literally ruin your life, sure, lets keep them where they are scheduled. But, c’mon SafeMontana, getting up on your soapbox and decrying the evils of cannabis is not as lucrative a tactic as it may once have been. In fact, it’s getting to the point where those who want to villify cannabis are starting to sound like global warming deniers. You can only hide in bullshit as long as enough people don’t know it’s bullshit. Recent polls are showing that a good 60% of the country is smelling that bullshit and thinks cannabis should be legalized.

So, we have another reason to reschedule cannabis (as if we needed more): declawing irrational prohibition groupies (well-intentioned though they may be).

I-174 needed just over 24,000 signatures to make the ballot. The deadline was June 20th, 2014. So far, no news has emerged regarding it’s passage or failure.

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