Synthetic Drug Control Act of 2011
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. COHEN. I appreciate the gentleman from Virginia for yielding the time.
I rise in opposition to this particular bill. It's not that I am, indeed, in favor of any of the particular drugs that are here; but just like Mrs. Adams, my colleague from Florida mentioned, the State of Florida has already criminalized it, as many States have, and it's really a State issue.
It seems interesting. When the subject du jour comes up, the item of the day, there is a rush to action and a rush to forget States' rights. There is a desire on gun bills to overlook the States and to have a Federal law on the interstate shipment of guns or on the interstate transportation of guns by people with permits. In this situation, drugs that should be criminalized are criminalized at the State level, but all of a sudden we're doing it more at the Federal level.
This bill would place more than 40 chemical compounds on Schedule I, the most punitive and restrictive schedule, without any independent scientific evidence that doing so is necessary or warranted. It is a rush to legislate before we know all the facts.
This bill essentially bans these substances without any study whatsoever. I've read the press reports of young people who have been harmed by these substances and by others, and I'm very sympathetic as that's certainly wrong; but we shouldn't legislate on the basis of anecdotal evidence. It's typical of the ``shoot first and ask questions later'' approach that we have taken to drug policy in this country for decades.
Our national drug policy should be driven by science, not politics. We've already gotten a well-deserved reputation here as a do-nothing Congress; but bills like this and our attitudes towards clean air, clean water, global climate change, and other environmental issues have made this the no-respect-for-science Congress as well.
The DEA has already taken steps to temporarily place certain synthetic substances on Schedule I while it conducts a review. If there is an emergency that requires temporarily scheduling the other substances in this bill, the DEA can review them and do that just as well.
But we shouldn't circumvent the process established in law. I don't think this is a responsible way to legislate. I know the sponsors of this bill know about the emergency review process because the bill doubles the length of time a bill can be put on emergency review on a schedule from 18 months to 3 years; it doubles it. Yet there's been no hearings or evidence that 18 months was insufficient, none whatsoever. It was just a knee-jerk way to respond to the issue du jour.
This is a very serious issue and deserves serious study and consideration before we act, as all bills before Congress should. I fear that this bill continues the misguided policies that we've created towards drugs in this country.
Just look at our experience with marijuana, which Congress placed on Schedule I in 1970. According to the criteria of the Controlled Substances Act, it supposedly has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.
Let's put aside for a minute the question of whether it has a potential for abuse. Certainly there's a lot of evidence that it does not. But I think thousands of people who depend on marijuana to treat the effects of such diseases as AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis would take issue with the notion that it has no medical use, and 15 or so States have legalized it for medical use. It increases appetite and eases pain in a way that has helped countless people in the last stages of life.
But we treat our approach to drugs as a law enforcement matter, not a scientific matter, and we've placed marijuana in Schedule I, the most restrictive schedule. Meanwhile, the scientific community is urging that we reschedule marijuana so we can continue to conduct important research and make it available to those in need.
Recently, the California Medical Association called for cannabis to be legalized and regulated, primarily so that scientists can gain access to it and conduct further research. They advocated wider clinical research with accountable and quality-controlled production of cannabis. None of this can happen with the tight restrictions we've placed on cannabis. That's exactly the situation we may find ourselves in with the substances named in this bill.
I know that licenses are available for research in the Schedule I drugs, but there's no reason to make researchers go through such hoops. It is nearly as easy to get permission to do research on a Schedule I drug as it would be to go to the Vatican and ask for a grant to study birth control.
We don't know what medical benefits these substances may contain and we don't know the true risk they pose. Perhaps they belong in a lower schedule. And Schedule II would certainly deter young people from using them and others and set a penalty stage. But we have no idea. We just decided to throw the book and make it Schedule I.
Perhaps they shouldn't be scheduled at all. I suspect they should be scheduled, maybe Schedule II. But the scientists should decide this and not politicians. We have no basis to believe they belong in Schedule I. Haven't we learned from this Nation's 40-year experiment with the war on drugs?
Prohibition does not work. It is an expensive and counterproductive policy that fills up our prisons and places a mark on our citizens that can make jobs, housing, and education nearly impossible to obtain. We should focus our efforts on educating young people about the substances and continue to do research about their benefits and risks.
Instead of basing our drug policy on science, we are letting it be driven by politics. This bill continues that trend, and regrettably I must urge its defeat. We need to send this bill back to committee and take a careful, considerable review so that we can have Congress make this decision on a scientific basis with help from the scientists.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. COHEN. The DEA can use its emergency powers to temporarily schedule these substances while letting the scientific process play out. Let's put science first and politics second. Let's defeat this bill.
If we put science first and politics second, maybe we won't be in single figures in the public's mind as an organization that they support as an institution. Part of the 9 percent level is because we do things sometimes in a rush to judgment and politics and the issue du jour rather than allowing the scientific process and doing what is logically best for our Nation to prevail.
I urge the defeat of this bill.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source