Vox Sentences: The DEA is only a little relaxed on marijuana

The DEA decides to keep marijuana under tight (but slightly less so) legal control; Assad is probably using chemical weapons again on Syrians.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

"Pot is still bad, okay?" —federal government

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• The Drug Enforcement Administration announced Thursday that after reviewing the evidence, it will keep marijuana classified as a "schedule 1" drug — the most restrictive category.

  [NPR / Carrie Johnson]

• A drug's "schedule" doesn't affect how illegal it is, as German Lopez explains. Rather, it determines how much regulators can restrict production of and research about it.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Because the DEA is an executive agency, drug legalization advocates were hopeful that the Obama administration would deschedule marijuana before leaving office to send a message that it's serious about ending the drug war.

  [LA Weekly / Dennis Romero]

• But some experts were skeptical that descheduling would really do all that much as a matter of policy.

  [The Reality-Based Community / Mark Kleiman]

• Besides, there's a serious silver lining to the DEA's announcement: The government will start allowing universities other than the University of Mississippi to start growing marijuana for research purposes.

  [NYT / Catherine Saint Louis and Matt Apuzzo]

• The monopoly on research marijuana made it nearly impossible for academics to get access to it, which made it impossible to conduct research on the health effects of marijuana.

  [Washington Post / Marc Kaufman]

• This paradox makes it ironic that the government just ruled, in keeping marijuana schedule 1, that it has "no medical benefits." But if the advent of new research demonstrates that marijuana can be medically helpful, the DEA's announcement will end up making later reform all but inevitable.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

This is not a ceasefire

Beha El Halebi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

• The UN is investigating reports that Syrian government forces used chlorine gas against civilians in the besieged city of Aleppo on Wednesday.

  [BBC]

• Attacks on Aleppo have continued to accelerate. Russia promised that it would start enforcing a three-hour "ceasefire" window Thursday to allow aid groups to drop supplies; rebel groups say that, if anything, attacks got worse.

  [Reuters / Angus McDowall and John Davison]

• The UN is trying to push for an actual ceasefire, enforced by external forces, to help civilians trapped in Aleppo.

  [The Guardian / Patrick Wintour and Kareem Shaheen]

• Even the US Holocaust Museum — which doesn't usually get involved in policy debates — is calling for the US to help create a no-fly zone over Aleppo.

  [Foreign Policy / John Hudson]

• Chlorine gas is a chemical weapon. This is the famous "red line" that President Obama said in 2011 Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad couldn't cross — then decided, when Assad started using sarin gas in attacks in 2013, to ignore.

  [The Atlantic / Jeffrey Goldberg]

• Obama's decision prevented the US from going to war in Syria. But human rights experts are worried that Assad's use of chlorine gas in attacks since then has "normalized" chemical weapons as an acceptable tool.

  [The Guardian / Emma Graham-Harrison]

Donald Trump said a thing

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• Donald Trump, August 10, 2016: "ISIS is honoring President Obama," he said. "He is the founder of ISIS. He is the founder of ISIS, okay? He is the founder. He founded ISIS."

  [PolitiFact / Louis Jacobson and Amy Sherman]

• President Obama did not, in fact, found ISIS. (The closest thing ISIS has to "a founder" is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.)

  [BuzzFeed News / Hayes Brown]

• Saying Obama "founded" ISIS is, plausibly, a clumsy gesture toward a standard conservative line of argument: that Obama's withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 created a security vacuum, allowing ISIS to spring up.

  [Slate / Reihan Salam]

• (Never mind that, at the time, Trump was vociferously in favor of the withdrawal.)

  [BuzzFeed News / Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott]

• When conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt tried to guide Trump toward that interpretation, however, Trump would have none of it. "He's literally the founder."

  [Politico / Louis Nelson]

• This, too, sounds familiar to some people — in a bad way. There's an active conspiracy theory in the Middle East and Russia (!) that Obama deliberately aided ISIS to destabilize countries in the Middle East.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• In summation, Donald Trump said something wrong and bad. This is not unusual. The most lasting effect of this particular iteration might be that cable news chyrons have finally found a way to call him out on it.

  [Fusion / Daniel Rivero]

MISCELLANEOUS

Meet Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the California couple that uses more water than every family in the state put together. [Mother Jones / Josh Harkinson]

• The show Drunk History is researched by a team of UCLA PhD students who consider as many as 500 stories a season.

  [Complex / Justin Monroe]

• New York City has the same population as Vermont, New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia, Wyoming, Montana, and both Dakotas put together. They have 16 Senate seats. It has less than one.

  [Jason Kottke]

• Barack Obama has released his summer playlist. It includes Courtney Barnett. That is correct.

  [White House]

• Poverty has barely gotten mentioned at all during this campaign. That's a shame.

  [NYT / Binyamin Appelbaum]

VERBATIM

"When placed next to a big dead elephant, signs urging visitors to avoid collecting ivory convey something of a mixed message." [Washington Post / Sadie Dingfelder]

• "We just had a national conversation out of the D.N.C. when the father of a soldier who was killed in battle said to Donald Trump, ‘What have you sacrificed?’ Not that the sacrifices here come close to losing a loved one, but it is a sacrifice to be a 23-year-old kid and to find your name on a complaint from Hulk Hogan."

  [John Cook via NYT / Jacob Bernstein]

• "I added an ASCII-fied image of Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air into the source of a financial application still being used by 3 large banks."

  [Anonymous, to Codementor]

• "someday im gonna make a list of all the things you have told me are 'sort of sports'"

  [Deadspin / Patrick Redford]

• "I want Aly Raisman to medal in the all-around and individual event finals as much as the next gymnastics fan. But maybe we would serve her best by freeing her to watch as much Gossip Girl as she wants and breathe as much air as she damn well pleases."

  [Slate / Heather Schwedel]

WATCH THIS

Yes, race walking is an Olympic sport. Here’s how it works. [YouTube / Brian Resnick and Phil Edwards]

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