Congress is considering a bill that would expand Jeff Sessions’s power to escalate the war on drugs
The new bill extends the temporary scheduling duration to five years for Schedule A substances and eliminates the requirement for analyzing the drug's abuse record and its potential risk to public health
Friday, June 16, 2017
Congress is considering a bill that would expand the federal government's ability to pursue the war on drugs, granting new power to the attorney general to set federal drug policy. The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by powerful committee chairs in Congress, would allow the attorney general to unilaterally outlaw certain unregulated chemical compounds on a temporary basis. The bill could be used to justify bans on substances that are not particularly lethal or dangerous. The drug known as kratom is an area of concern. The risks with using kratom are “remarkably low,” and people say it has helped them quit using alcohol, opiates and other, much deadlier substances. Kratom advocates fear that the new bill would allow the Justice Department to outlaw the drug, as it tried unsuccessfully to do last year.
