Friend,
Moving a drug to Schedule III means, essentially, that the federal government acknowledges a medical benefit that merits loosening restrictions around a drug's use by the medical and pharmaceutical communities.
That may sound technical. It isn't. Rescheduling cannabis would send a clear signal that the federal government believes marijuana is medically beneficial and fundamentally safe. The evidence shows the opposite.
After more than a decade of widespread legalization, the verdict is in: recreational marijuana has harmed public health, endangered young people, and imposed massive costs on families and communities.
Today's marijuana is not the weed of the 1960s. It has been deliberately engineered to be seven to thirty times more potent, and we are only beginning to understand the consequences.
People aren't just getting high. They're getting damaged.
The American College of Cardiologists has confirmed that regular users face increased risks of heart attack and stroke; while medical experts are reporting sharp increases in cannabis-related emergency room visits and coined a new medical term: cannabis hyperemesis syndrome: uncontrollable, long lasting violent vomiting and body ache caused by chronic marijuana use.
The damage to mental health is even more alarming. Scientific studies by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), Frontiers in Psychiatry, and Nature have proven beyond doubt that cannabis use alters brain chemistry, increasing the risk of psychosis, schizophrenia, severe anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Among adolescents, regular use is associated with a permanent drop in IQ, impaired emotional development, and long-term difficulty forming relationships, succeeding in school, or holding a job.
Moreover, addiction is not rare. It is common. Conservative estimates show one in three users becomes addicted, with the highest dependency rates among high-frequency users—the very consumers driving the legal cannabis industry.
Legalization was supposed to make communities safer. It hasn't.
States with permissive cannabis laws have seen spikes in impaired driving, emergency room visits, homelessness, and violent crime. The black market hasn't disappeared: it has exploded, supplying unregulated, contaminated marijuana even to legal dispensaries.
And the promised tax windfall? A mirage. In Colorado, every dollar raised in cannabis taxes has been offset by more than four dollars in social costs, including health care, traffic fatalities, and lost productivity.
Rescheduling cannabis now, before FDA approval, before long-term safety studies, before we understand the full public-health consequences, would repeat the catastrophic mistake America made with tobacco.
We cannot afford another generation paying the price.
That's why I urge you to join CatholicVote in telling President Trump to abandon any plan to reschedule cannabis.
Through the CatholicVote Action Center, you can send a message directly to the White House, encouraging President Trump to cancel any plan to reschedule cannabis.
Please reach out right away.
Go forward bravely,
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