In the United States we have 5 classifications for the regulation of drugs, called Schedules by (The Controlled Substances Act)CSA signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1970.

Schedule 1 is defined thusly (emphasis mine):

1. The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
2. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
3. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Critically, this is considered the worst category of drugs under the law. They may not be prescribed and their production is restricted by both quotas and stringent requirements for obtaining a license to do so.

Before I provide any examples of Schedule 1 drugs, lets take a look at Schedule 2 first:

1. The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
2. The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions.
3. Abuse of the drug or other substances may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.

I’ve emphasized the important parts of the guidelines. In the case of Schedule 1 there’s no medical benefits to the substance and that they’re too dangerous to be used even under medical scrutiny regardless of their other effects. While Schedule 2 is for substances that do have a known medical benefit to the substance, but may be addictive.

This list of drugs is maintained by the DEA and FDA, and occasionally legislation will be passed to put a drug on one schedule or another.

The List

Here’s a list of some Schedule 2 substances:

• Cocaine
• Morphine
• Pentobarbital (lethal injection)
• Amphetamine & its salts (Adderall)
• Methamphetamine (Meth)
• Methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta)
• Opium & Laudanum
• Phencyclidine (PCP, Angel Dust)
• Methadone
• Oxycodone & Hydrocodone
• Pethidine (Demerol)

Wow. That’s a hell of a list there. Yet, we’ve found uses for many of these drugs and work hard to avoid their addictive nature.

What could be worse? Whats so bad that they had to include a category that would qualify a substance so dangerous that even the medical community can’t be trusted with them?

Here’s a the list of some Schedule 1 controlled substances:

• Diacetylmorphine (Heroin, Smack, Tar)
• Etorphine (M99)
• Methaqualone (Quaalude)
• GHB (Liquid X, Lollipop)
• MDMA (Ecstasy, E, X, Molly)
• Mescaline (Peyote)
• LSD (Acid)
• DMT (Ayahuasca)
• Psilocybin & Psilocin (Psychedelic Mushrooms, Shrooms, Mushies)
• Cannabis (Marijuana, Weed)

There’s Heroin for one. Well, thats pretty bad. It’s twice as potent as the already dangerous Morphine and even more addictive.

But do any of these others seem odd to you? I mean, there’s M99, a chemical thousands of times more powerful than Morphine, and GHB has been used as a date rape drug. So I can sorta see what they were going for.

People sometimes overdose on Molly and Quaaludes (or at least used to). Though many of those are due to impurities. There’s been a lot of horror stories about Acid, but little of it holds much water, but its already starting to strain my suspension of disbelief.

I mean, are Peyote and Ayahuasca really that dangerous? It’s still allowed on Native American reservations in the US. I haven’t heard of a lot of bad coming from that. Besides, I’m not aware of any religious exemption for Heroin.

But then we get to weed and its just confusing. The number of accepted uses for THC and associated cannabinoids is well documented. It’s being legalized in individual states against the wishes of the federal government. How did it ever end up on the same list as Heroin? Yet Cocaine was considered more medically useful than THC? Seriously?

If I were going to rate the most dangerous drugs known to man, useful or not, I’d have to start with Heroin, Meth, Cocaine, and their friends. I really don’t think Weed is going to even come up as a possibility except maybe as a joke.

MDMA was originally being used to treat PTSD and help others with traumatic experiences. Psilocybin and psilocin have been used to successfully treat cluster headaches and OCD.

A disproportionate number of these substances are easily obtained from local flora and some are even chemicals found naturally in human neurochemistry. Of the psychoatice compounds in the list, very few of them are habit-forming at all. It’s interesting how they avoided mentioning dependency-forming as a requirement for Schedule 1.

It becomes clear pretty fast that this list has little to do with its stated goals and is more about appealing to political interests.

An interesting economic repercussion of substances like this occurring naturally is that there is significantly less incentive to crime, additionally for substances that aren’t likely to form a dependence, this is also could not be a prime motivator. While the substances are legal, there is no constriction of supply, so demand will be met easily. It seems strange that these drugs, which are considered some of the least harmful by medical researchers should be classed above others that are measured to be the most dangerous.

What could the priorities of a society be that would villainize weed and shrooms over coke and meth?

The Cost

In 2004 it was estimated that there are nearly 45 thousand state and federal prisoners serving sentences for marijuana possession and manufacture/sale alone. In 2005 there were 786,545 people charged with marijuana-related offenses.

According to the US Department of Justice we’re spending about a billion dollars year just keeping them in prison, and an additional $8 billion in court costs to prosecute them.

Some of these prisoners are serving 20 years to de facto life. Many will die there.

Let that sink in.