Marijuana has a lower potential for abuse than other drugs that are subjected to the same restrictions, with scientific support for its use as a medical treatment, researchers from the US Food and Drug Administration say in documents supporting its reclassification as a Schedule III substance.
Marijuana is currently classified as Schedule I, reserved for the most dangerous controlled substances, including heroin and LSD. In 2022, President Joe Biden asked US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and the attorney general to begin the administrative process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Rachel Levine wrote a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration in August in which she supported the reclassification to Schedule III, a list that includes “drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence” such as ketamine, testosterone and Tylenol with codeine.
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Rescheduling marijuana could open up more avenues for research, allow cannabis businesses to bank more freely and openly, and have firms no longer subject to a 40-year-old tax code that disallows credits and deductions from income generated by sales of Schedule I and II substances.
This article seems to imply that stopping heavy marijuana use can lead to withdrawal symptoms.
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that.
There’s definitely symptoms. Irritability being the main one.
Trouble sleeping is another one. It’s not a heroin withdrawal, but it’s there.
Inability to sleep and lack of appetite are also pretty common.
People can get that from not watching TV or listening to music.
Should we also ban those?
Goku goes SSII when he’s resting on his T break weekends
It said mild withdrawal symptoms. Nothing like alcohol or cocaine withdrawal.
Irritability, sleep problems, night sweats, appetite issues, etc. These are 100% withdrawl effects for some heavy or frequent cannabis users who stop cold turkey.
Is it cocaine or heroin withdrawl? Absolutely not. But we don’t do anyone any favours pretending that people don’t experience these symptoms when stopping (though, on the other hand, not everyone does. Depends how heavy/long you’ve been imbibing and individual differences in body chemistry).
Crazy vivid dreams after stopping long term use as well.
Not necessarily a negative withdrawal effect, although the sudden vivid dreams can be extra scary if the dreams aren’t happy dreams
Tbf, these are also some of the issues that starting weed helped me fix probably because ADHD.
Thing is, I 100% believe you. Cannabis can help with these kind of problems too, depending on the person.
My only gripe is when people say “Lol, no one gets withdrawl symptoms when they stop smoking weed”. It’s true that not everyone experiences it, but a) when I have stopped cold turkey for anything more than a few days, I personally have these problems, with a fairly predictable timeframe/duration, and b) I don’t seem to be the only one who does*
Want to make it clear that I really like cannabis, and it can legitimately be a game changer for some people’s conditions. But it’s important to balance out the actual good and the actual bad when talking about it - cannabis is neither 100% perfect for everyone every time, nor is it the Devil’s Lettuce that will lead to doing bumps of heroin on a pile of dead babies and an unhealthy love of freeform jazz. The truth’s in the middle - it has benefits as well as downsides, and different people experience both to different degrees.
*There is, of course, an argument to be made that people who get ‘hit hard’ with withdrawl effects do so because they were self-medicating for some unrecognized condition. I don’t necessarily buy that for all cases, but it’s worth thinking about.
The body is going to react to anything that it stops getting after it has been getting it consistently. Caffeine is perfectly legal and I get bad migraines from quitting it.
Very vivid dreams for a week count?
That’s about it. I am getting a good amount of pushback from people who very much like the idea that being able to dream again and not being high are withdrawl.
And sure, they’re all technically correct in the most pedantic way.
longtime user here, i tuck in with a bowl every night, and every morning i wake up with a dream still dancing in my head. when i go on a break i don’t “start dreaming again”, I have extremely vivid and bizarre dreams for like a week and then it settles back to normal. Drugs have more effect on dreaming than just “stop” and “go”. I suspect the issue is less others being pedantic and more you being unwilling to challenge a deeply oversimplified take.
Wow, you remember vivid dreams. That’s clearly withdrawl.
…In the most technical sense, only. You’re technically correct, the best form of correct. Which is pretty much the definition of pedantry.
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You’re just straight up provoking me now without even the pretense of trying to make any kind of point, so I’m going to just hit that block button and be done with this exchange.
When I smoke more regularly everyday and stop suddenly I can feel horribly depressed, have trouble eating and sleeping, there are pretty widely recognized withdrawal symptoms though they aren’t as bad for everyone. Ask a therapist who works with substance abuse if weed has any withdrawal symptoms, plenty of people have trouble taking breaks or stopping because it can be hard for some to tolerate the symptoms. Obviously it’s not the same as something like heroin or benzos but it’s more than just more dreams.
It’s not even the same as caffeine, my dude.
True, I feel much worse physically when lacking caffeine lol.