Indopedia All Things Marijuana
The House Judiciary Committee just advanced a bill that would greatly expand the ability of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ban new drugs while increasing criminal penalties for drug offenders. The Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues Act of 2017 (SITSA), would create a new drug schedule in the Controlled Substances Act for drug analogues.
Drugs like fentanyl, bath salts, and synthetic marijuana strains known as K2 or spice (which are all synthetic versions of traditional opioids, amphetamines, or cannabis) have been flooding the country over the past several years. Manufacturers and importers of these drugs are often able to avoid prosecution by slightly altering the chemical makeup of each new batch of the drug, making it legal again until federal or local governments get around to banning the new version.
“Criminals can figure out a way to change one molecule in a drug, but the resulting drug is just as dangerous, and often even more so,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte. “This bill closes this dangerous loophole by ensuring our laws keep pace with the creation of new, chemically-altered drugs and by providing law…
