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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

CA Advocates Slam DEA Decision to Keep Marijuana a Schedule One Drug

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Friday, August 12, 2016   

SACRAMENTO, Calif, - Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996, but today, the Drug Enforcement Administration published its decision in the Federal Register to keep classifying it as an illegal drug under federal law. The move means cannabis will remain a Schedule One drug, the highest designation, the same as heroin.

Dale Gieringer director of California NORML (National Organization for Reforming Marijuana Laws), thinks the DEA, as a law enforcement agency, shouldn't be responsible for decisions on how to classify drugs.

"The DEA wants to continue its unjustified war on marijuana," he said. "They have a vested interest in doing so, and like any bureaucracy, they are trying to protect their own power."

The feds say there aren't enough well-executed studies to prove marijuana use is safe, and the DEA did move to facilitate more research, by allowing more schools to grow the plants for study, which is good news for the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California San Diego.

Gieringer thinks marijuana should be taken off the controlled-substances list altogether, just like alcohol and tobacco. He said the feds were only considering a half-measure and then, rejected even that.

"The measure that the DEA was considering supposedly would just be scheduling to Schedule Two, putting marijuana on a level with opium and cocaine, and methamphetamine, which are also on Schedule Two, and they couldn't even do that much," he lamented.

Forty-two states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana use. Californians will vote in November on whether to legalize it for recreational use.


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