Schedule 1 drugs are “drugs with no acceptable medical use” according to the Controlled Substance Act of 1970. This classification puts certain drugs into the most strongly regulated category of controlled substances. LSD, MDMA, marijuana and psilocybin are included in this class of drugs. However, some of the drugs put in this class have in the past shown possible medical uses, research which was for the most part halted when psychoactive drugs were placed in the Schedule 1 category.
This causes a problem for those researchers and scientists who may be able to find new benefits and uses for psychoactive substances. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any professional to use Schedule 1 drugs in any laboratory setting, the reason being that there is no purpose to study a drug that has “no acceptable medical application.” The continued restriction on controlled substance research is a hotly debated topic among researchers.
Most of the Schedule 1 drugs were originally developed in the medical drug industry. For example, before 1970, there were many scientific publications documenting ways LSD could help psychotherapy be more effective. MDMA was used in talk therapy. Researchers put promising ideas and findings on long-term hold, and are now questioning the outdated reasoning that continues this research ban.
Psychologists would like to know whether MDMA can help with intractable post-traumatic stress disorder, whether LSD or psilocybin can provide relief for cluster headaches or obsessive-compulsive disorder, and whether the particular docking receptors on brain cells that many psychedelics latch onto are critical sites for regulating conscious states that go awry in schizophrenia and depression.
There are many unanswered questions that medical studies could eventually help answer.
Doctors in several states are now writing prescriptions for cannabis products of differing potency without the background of dosage studies and the effects of interaction with other drugs. There are strong indications that marijuana may help treat nausea, ADHD, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions.
The U.S. government should move these drugs to the less strict Schedule II classification. Such a move would not lead to decriminalization of these potentially dangerous drugs—Schedule II also includes cocaine, opium and methamphetamine, after all—but it would make it much easier for clinical researchers to study their effects.
A few private studies have occurred through the years. The results that they revealed indicate there is merit in continued research into these and combinations of these drugs. Psychopharmacologist David J. Nutt of Imperial College London and his co-authors in a recent article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience noted,
(It) requires traversing a daunting bureaucratic labyrinth that can dissuade even the most committed investigator. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) It can take years to receive approval for a clinical trial from both regulators and hospital ethics committees, even while tallying thousands of dollars in licensing fees and tens of thousands to obtain drugs that are, of course, unavailable from a chemical supply catalogue.
These obstacles have caused most of the research to come to a complete stop.
If leaders in the field of scientific and medical research can find a solution to the rhetoric that is the result of our society’s war on drugs, much needed information will finally become available through study. Perhaps it is time for change. The likely development of new and successful treatments for devastating illnesses and disorders may be possible with a more open-minded approach to drug research.