Summary

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) is the statute establishing federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain substances is regulated.
In the United States, the basis of modern regulation is the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Congress passed the CSA as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. It replaced a long series of previous legislation, including the Harrison Narcotic Act and the Marijuana Tax Act. The CSA laid out the authority of the federal government and provided a framework within which all existing and new substances could be regulated based on abuse potential, safety, and medical utility.

Intended Positives

This statute was an effort to combine all previous federal drug laws and allow for federal law enforcement of controlled substances, serving as the legal foundation in the federal fight against drug abuse. The law was intended to combat drug abuse and to reduce the production, distribution, and possession of controlled substances.

Originally the purpose of the CSA was to fulfill the requirements of two international treaties, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) and the Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971). Through the CSA, Congress restricted those allowed to manufacture, import, export, distribute and dispense controlled substances by requiring registration. The US Attorney General provides this registration, which is mandatory for any person or company making or using any controlled substance, as defined by the CSA.

Furthermore, the rigid classification and strict criminalization of Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 substances were put in place with the intention of deferring individuals from the unlawful and unregulated transaction and use of these substances.

Known or Announced Negatives

The law has been criticized for disproportionately targeting certain communities and for having a negative impact on public health.
Based on research by critics, the Controlled Substances Act is not effective at curtailing drug use, abuse, and overdoses. Additionally, the Controlled Substances Act has produced negative externalities as a result of implementation. Further, they don't consider that the Act is economically efficient as it does not provide a sufficient return on investment in contrast with international alternatives. The CSA mandates that a person with any felony related to a controlled substance or a person who has had an application for registration denied for cause may not be employed by a pharmacy in a position that will allow access to controlled substances. This can negative impact the employment opportunities for ex-convicts. Finally, based on the scheduling language in the Controlled Substances Act, the substances of marijuana, LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin are overclassified creating additional ramifications including limitations for further research.

Observed Positives

The law has helped to reduce the production, distribution, and possession of controlled substances.

Most notably, it has helped enhance Healthcare team outcomes. The entire health care team, including clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, and pharmacy techs, form a network of checks and balances, all now are bound by law to ensure the safety of patients regarding controlled substances that are prescribed and dispensed. A team-centered approach to identifying risk factors, monitoring pain symptoms, and thoroughly assessing patients for chronic pain is the ideal way to limit complications. Inter-professional communication between all these inter-professional team members can provide care coordination for optimal management of pain, especially regarding controlled substances.

There are people who claim that the war on drugs has also helped and implemented good things in their communities and overall society. Deterrence and lessening of drug related crimes: since the production of, selling of, and consumption of drugs is highly prohibited the number of drug-related crimes would decrease over time Drug-Free Communities: if all the drugs, drug abusers, dealers, and manufacturers are behind bars there will be no one else there to bring drugs into the area. However, it should be noted that this is an anecdotal story and no current studies or news can be found on specific communities in which this is the case. 

Observed Negatives

The CSA aims to reduce public harm, increase public health, and limit drug use. Reduction of public harm, according to the CSA, comes in the form of less criminality due to less drugs and drug addicts through incapacitation and deterrence. 
The law has been criticized for disproportionately targeting certain communities and for having a negative impact on public health by criminalizing drug use rather than treating it as a public health issue, for failing to live up to its own expectations and for being an economic inefficiency.

      • First, critics of the CSA maintain that it does not effectively curtail use of drugs within the United States.
Comprehensive research has been conducted to obtain information regarding the number of drug overdoses, drug abuse, and numbers of incarcerated individuals in the U.S. and measure against addiction-friendly alternatives such as Portugal.

Contrasting the CSA effectiveness against that of Portugal and the Netherlands provides evidence that alternative drug policies, while not necessarily intuitive, provide better outcomes regarding drug use. Additionally, the CSA is not effective at preventing drug overdoses with mortal consequences. As found in the literature review, Portugal had a severe issue with drug overdoses, and intravenous pathogen spread with their heroin epidemic, and through their decriminalization policy has benefited by seeing their overdoses move from one of the highest in Europe, to one of the lowest in the world, while the United States has seen increases to the effect that certain groups of the population have seen life expectancy decreases with the opioid epidemic as the central cause.

    • It is inefficient from an economic perspective.
Not only is the CSA ineffective at reducing harm in the form of addiction and overdoses, it is very costly. With exponential increases in spending due to the War on Drugs, increased prison costs, and massive increases in incarcerated individuals due to drug crimes, the CSA does not appear to provide a sufficient return on investment compared with alternative policies. Since the inception of the CSA, expenditures have gone up, results have either been stagnant or negative. The economic externalities of the CSA do not indicate an effective policy with regards to its return on investment.

    • It disproportionately affects lower income and immigrant communities
Furthermore, the majority of the arrests made for drug-related crimes are of African Americans and Latin Americans.The U.S. Department of Justice said that drug offense arrests rose 126% from 1995 to 2000, 27% of the total growth was among African American inmates and 7% of total growth was among Hispanic inmates. Furthermore, discourse relating to this law has claimed that sentencing in drug-related crimes has major flaws. As well as racially discriminatory as minorities tend to use certain drugs over others and carry a bigger penalty.
The flaws with this Act shines light on the statistic that the majority of people who deal and use drugs are within or below the poverty line, and the Act could maintain a cycle of poverty and criminality.

References