As you may know, the DEA has announced that it won't move marijuana off Schedule I. In a letter to two Governors and a New Mexico nurse practitioner, DEA Administrator said the agency gave "enormous weight" to the FDA's conclusion that marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" -- a conclusion made much easier by the fact that marijuana research remains almost prohibitively difficult to conduct! The DEA's letter does take credit for the doubling in "individuals and institutions registered with DEA" to conduct research on marijuana over the past two years, but that's rather like a middle infielder patting himself on the back for hitting two home runs in a season instead of one. So the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to force the DEA to reschedule marijuana, so that scientists and law enforcement can do their jobs. Remember that when fools tell you rescheduling would "hurt the police," that rescheduling would not prevent police from conducting drug raids. Some folks will say anything these days just to avoid progress.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell the USDA to test food for glyphosate. Why? Because we swamp our farms and lawns with glyphosate and we have no idea how much of it we're eating, drinking, or breathing, and because scientists have linked glyphosate with cancer, childbirth issues, and cell function. And four European nations (France, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands) have suspended Monsanto's license to use RoundUp on crops (Roundup is the most famous brand name for Glyphosate), pending further study. Glyphosate has been around since the early '70s, and was the first widely-available pesticide to kill weeds without also killing crops, but that doesn't mean we should do nothing about glyphosate's harmful effects, because that's a hostage situation. Civilized people have a duty to confront problems and fix them, thereby maintaining civilization. And certainly we are a can-do people who can come up with better and safer pesticides, even if big ag corporations don't really want to go along.
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