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In the US MDMA started off as a legal drug until the mid 80s when the DEA made it illegal

Man, I remember the time when we had to pass a constitutional amendment to make a substance illegal. Now a government agency can just declare substances illegal without needing to justify it to anybody.

It’s amazing. The regime loves all the agencies/departments though as it maintains power in the event the people elect someone that would give democracy back to the people.

These agencies just have carte-blanche to pass laws based on whatever whim they might have. They set limits on things and decide what and how to regulate.

One thing I love about this site is how people from all walks of life contribute.

Congratulations on reaching your hundredth birthday.

Because they were born before 1970, which was when the Controlled Substances Act allowed the executive branch to make certain drugs illegal :)

The controlled substances act is not a constitutional amendment.

Before the CSA, the most notable legal instrument for banning substances was the constitutional amendment.

After the CSA, the most notable legal instrument for banning constitutional substances was an administrative decision.

That's a pretty willfully naive answer though. The fact that the CSA was passable at all is indicative that something had changed. Because if the legislative branch can grant the executive branch the right to make drugs illegal, the legislative branch must have had that ability to do so without a constitutional amendment on its own already. The question is what changed that made the CSA possible?

The correct answer is that in the 30s the courts started taking the position that the federal government could do things that weren't explicitly granted as within their powers, and most types of trade were now within "interstate commerce"

It's also generally just a wrong answer that misses big things like the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act in the 30s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmet...

The DEA is evil. They drag their feet in allowing FDA approved medicines to be approved for sale. There was a law passed recently that they had N months to schedule it because they kept taking so long. If a single person in a study says a medicine gives them feelings of euphoria it can be subject to scheduling, which makes it an epic pain in the ass to acquire. They don’t allow electronic prescriptions to be sent for some drugs, and at least for mine, they can’t be for longer than 90 days.

For example, I am basically forced to take Vimpat, a DEA scheduled anti-epilepsy medicine. Due to the scheduling, I can only pick it up 2 days before it’s due for refill, and otherwise have to have a doctor provide me an early refill request. It’s like they don’t expect me to ever go on vacation or have a life. I feel chained down by this. The DEA treats me like a pleasure seeking drug addict. The sad thing is I am a drug addict, I just take it to stay alive, and don’t get any pleasure from this drug. If I don’t get it I’ll probably withdrawal and die. Also, who the hell is going to use a drug that costs $1400/month for pleasure?

I. Hate. The. DEA. For some of these epilepsy drugs the scheduling seems cruel and senseless. All it does is make life difficult for doctors, pharmacies, and patients. For what??? No one wants to take these drugs. It’s a joke that this stupid agency would even consider these to have some recreational value. Sure the benzos, but for the majority of them, no.

A friend of mine calls this Suffering Theology. Anything that might bring pleasure is bad. It's why so many medical justifications had to be made to make marijuana legal. It's why we have to say "oh, shrooms heal depression" or whatever shit before we can decriminalize.

There is a deep Puritanism that ramifies through America. Suffering is necessary. Pain is necessary.

I'd say it's likely much more banal than that. There are armies of bureaucrats and agents whose livelihood and source of influence is rooted in the war on drugs. It is against their interests to go easy.

There's probably some of that. But this also reminds me of SSC's Against Against Pseudoaddiction[0]. Seems like some people really really want to be able to say, oooh I caught me a drug addict, nice try you lousy addict!

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...

Hell it’s a pain in the ass for me to try to keep a supply of psuedophredrine. Whenever I get a cold, let alone Covid, Sudafed is the only thing that keeps my overactive immune system in check and keeps my asthma from flaring up.

There is basically a national registry that records when I buy Sudafed. But let someone even mention a registry for guns and people go nuts.

See also: now that drugs affect “rural America” and the burbs it’s a “disease” caused by a lax government. But when it was mostly affecting “the inner city” it was because of “poor morals” and absentee fathers (who were overwhelmingly targeted by the “War on Drugs”)

And yes I’m well aware that both political parties are culpable

Other legal methods could absolutely have been used at the time, making it a constitutional amendment was a tactic. The idea was to make it difficult or impossible to challenge or repeal. If it was a medical regulation, that could just be changed by a later administration. A law might be challenged before the Supreme Court. A constitutional amendment insulated it from Supreme Court oversight and made it much harder to overturn legislatively.

It was not really a tactic, they didn’t believe the federal government had the legislative power to effect prohibition without it: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/1201/what-were-t...

> Man, I remember the time when we had to pass a constitutional amendment to make a substance illegal.

You mean the one adopted for alcohol after prohibition started, and which made it so that we had to pass a Constitutional. Amendment to allow the substance?

We always had the choice to do that for other drugs to make it harder to legalize, but its probably a good idea we haven’t.

That’s how drug classification works - molecules don’t start off as banned.

Actually... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/legal-highs-...

Unstated - in countries with working judicial review systems. The UK legal highs laws were malformed from the start.

The DEA has to justify its existence somehow...

The DEA is not just chasing street drug dealers. They also went after US companies that helped manufacturing the opioid crisis with oxycontin and fentanyl and tried to shut them down.

Unfortunately, big pharma talked to their congressmen buddies to limit the action of the DEA. (see Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act)

So you’re saying they’re just chasing street drug dealers

> Unfortunately, big pharma talked to their congressmen buddies to limit the action of the DEA. (see Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act)

Yet again with enough _protection money_ the feds go after the low hanging fruit.

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