What are the 5 types of controlled substances? The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) places all substances regulated under existing federal law into one of five schedules. This placement is based upon the substance’s medical use, the potential for abuse, and safety or dependence liability.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, defines the Controlled Substances Act as,
An Act to amend the Public Health Service Act and other laws to provide increased research into, and prevention of, drug abuse and drug dependence; to provide for treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers and drug dependent persons; and to strengthen existing law enforcement authority in the field of drug abuse.
Its psychic or physiological dependence liability.
Whether the substance is an immediate precursor of a substance already controlled under this subchapter.
Disclaimer: A substance need not be listed as a controlled substance to be treated as a scheduled substance for criminal prosecution. The reason being that these lists describe the basic or parent chemical of a substance. Thus, they don’t describe the salts, isomers, salts of isomers, esters, ethers, and derivatives.
How are substances placed in their respective schedules?
Do they they have a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States
What is their relative abuse potential?
Is there a likelihood of causing dependence when abused?
Here are some examples of the drugs in each schedule.
Schedule I Controlled Substances
Substances in this schedule have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.
Some examples of substances listed in Schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualone, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (“Ecstasy”).
Schedule II/IIN Controlled Substances (2/2N)
In this schedule substances have a high potential for abuse leading to severe psychological or physical dependence.
Amphetamine (Dexedrine®, Adderall®), methamphetamine (Desoxyn®), and methylphenidate (Ritalin®).
Other Schedule II substances
Amobarbital, glutethimide, and pentobarbital.
Schedule III/IIIN Controlled Substances (3/3N)
Substances in this schedule have a potential for abuse less than substances in Schedules I or II and abuse may lead to moderate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence.
Schedule III narcotics
Products containing not more than 90 milligrams of codeine per dosage unit (Tylenol with Codeine®), and buprenorphine (Suboxone®)
Examples of Schedule IIIN non-narcotic
Benzphetamine (Didrex®), phendimetrazine, ketamine, and anabolic steroids such as Depo®-Testosterone.
Schedule IV Controlled Substances
Substances in this schedule have a low potential for abuse relative to substances in Schedule III. Examples include: alprazolam (Xanax®), carisoprodol (Soma®), clonazepam (Klonopin®), clorazepate (Tranxene®), diazepam (Valium®), lorazepam (Ativan®), midazolam (Versed®), temazepam (Restoril®), and triazolam (Halcion®).
Schedule V Controlled Substances
Substances in this schedule V have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV. They primarily consist of preparations with limited quantities of certain narcotics. For examples: cough preparations containing not more than 200 milligrams of codeine per 100 milliliters or per 100 grams (Robitussin AC®, Phenergan with Codeine®), and ezogabine.3 ultimate benefits of controlling substances in trafficking, gang wars, and crimes
Legalization of Controlled Substances
What is the interpretation of the legalization of any substances? “Controlled substances are now easily available.”
Hall and Lynskey (2016) points out an additional challenge. It’s problematic to draw a legal line in banning or legalizing controlled substances. This is how complicated it is:
The state and national level legalization is very different
It is very expensive to regulate and enforce controlled substances related laws
The difference in policies has an enormous effect on the youth
A case in point is Marijuana
Marijuana’s medicinal application in cancer and Aids patients is prevalent. Why? Its a great discomfort and pain reliever.
For-profit legal cannabis
Several factors ignite increased use of for-profit legalized cannabis. Some of them include;
By making it more socially acceptable to use,
Making it more readily available at a cheaper price, and
Increasing the number of users and frequency of their use.
Is it too early to see the full effects of legalized cannabis policies on use and harm? Several factors could delay the full commercialization of a legal cannabis industry.
The major challenge in predicting the effects of legalizing recreational cannabis use is the absence of any recent experience. A radical policy change is also a factor. Most preceding cannabis policy changes have been more incremental. They have reduced or removed criminal penalties for personal use but left cannabis supply to the black market.
The controlled substances act
As part of the United Nations (UN) international drug control system, the World Health Organization (WHO) seeks to support the obligation of governments to establish a system of control that ensures both the adequate availability of controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes, and the prevention of substance abuse, diversion and trafficking.
The question is, how harmful must a drug be before its made illegal?
An interesting fact!
Look at an environment where public pressures mount against the use of substances like tobacco. The experience is that the legalization of marijuana has a different dimension.
Why?
Funds disbursed to incarcerate drug offenders need to include treating ills caused by newly legalized substances. At some future time, public medicinal programs must be but in pace. Data is not available on whether (or how much) the use of such drugs as marijuana would increase – if legalized.
Kasunic and Lee, 2014 further argue that the enormous harm that controlled substances (illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco) cause the users and non-users prompt many governments to impose strictly enforced bans on their production and possession. Such bans help restrict drug use. On the other hand, prohibition causes harm, including damages from black market, crime, and violence.
Further research: Get the definition and history of controlled substances act 1970 here.
Banning controlled substances
The tendencies of a ban of controlled substances leads to:
Decreased crime from trafficking, gang wars, and crimes
The decreased urge to obtain substances and lower incarceration rates
An associated cost-saving, as more funds are available for treatment from savings and taxes on legally distributed drugs (Kasunic and Lee, 2014).
U. S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration
In response to the public health emergency posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DEA made several important changes to the prescribing rules that govern prescription of controlled substances.
“DEA-registered practitioners are not required to obtain additional registration(s) with DEA in the additional state(s) where the dispensing (including prescribing and administering) occurs, for the duration of the public health emergency declared on January 31, 2020, if authorized to dispense controlled substances by both the state in which a practitioner is registered with DEA and the state in which the dispensing occurs.”
Would the legalization of substances ameliorate the black-market harms? On the contrary. It would increase some other damages for decreasing price, thereby increasing the use and dependence controlled substances.
Opponents of legalization have being engaging in serious logical contortions to justify the legality of some substances like alcohol and tobacco.
As it is already, the consumption of these harmful substances yield lengthy prison sentences. For example, Reuter (2013) shows several goals of tobacco control with specified endgame policies. Fr example, the levels of smoking and tobacco-related health repercussions .
Though the policies have been considered, other after-effects beyond smoking, pervasiveness, forms, and related abuse are a normal occurrences in the population. In this case, the policies threaten to create larger black markets.
Law enforcement and prohibition of controlled harmful substances
What ensues is the potential attendant harms: corruption, high illegal earnings, violence, and organized felonies. Western societies have an extensive understanding of the problems corresponding to the prohibition of substances like cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Low prevalence has been achieved only by stringent enforcement with damaging unintended consequences.
80% of people who have abused heroin started by abusing prescription opioids.
-NIH
Complete or partial prohibition of tobacco does not present the same trade-off, but there is little basis for a projection of the scale, form, and abuse of the attendant black markets. It is important to note that arguments claiming that the war on drugs is succeeding because drug use is down as measured at some point, time, or date in the past ignores the fact that drug use is a cyclic phenomenon with ebbs and flows.
Controlled substance prescription refill rules
How important are prescription refill rules? Candidly controlled substance prescription refill rules are in place for patient safety and to control healthcare costs.
The Controlled Substances Act and DEA’s implementing regulations prohibit the refilling of schedule II controlled substances to prevent abuse.
As a result of the pandemic, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) prohibits refilling a prescription, but allows issuing multiple prescriptions “authorizing the patient to receive a total of up to a 90-day supply of Schedule II controlled substance.” The conditions to be met include:
Prescriptions must be signed and dated
The earliest date for which each successive prescription can be filled must be clearly indicated
In conclusion, despite the law enforcement leaders’ stringent measures, outlawing controlled substances strengthen cartels. The resultant effect is allowing infiltration and increasing sales of hard drugs t.
Consequently, there are pros and cons of the legalization of controlled substances in the U. S. Outlawing controlled substances creates a larger black market.
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