By Bronte Price, PolitcKING
Former Attorney General Eric Holder came out in support of reclassifying marijuana in a recent interview with the PBS show, “Frontline.” Holder supports reclassifying the drug from a Schedule I substance, which is a classification reserved for dangerous drugs that have no medical use, into a less restrictive category. “I certainly think it ought to be rescheduled,” Holder says. “You know, we treat marijuana in the same way that we treat heroin now, and that clearly is not appropriate.”
Read Eric Holder's interview with FRONTLINE on criminal justice reform and drug policy https://t.co/sTbOdE1I4npic.twitter.com/fLhlrJMjm4
— FRONTLINE (@frontlinepbs) February 25, 2016
When Holder was Attorney General in September 2014, he said that rescheduling the drug is “something that I think we need to ask ourselves, and use science as the basis for making that determination.”
Holder says that it is time for federal lawmakers to begins to consider decriminalizing marijuana altogether. “I think that certainly that ought to be a part of the conversation,” he told Frontline. “You know, where do we want to be as a nation? Now, there’s certain drugs I just can’t see. It’s hard for me to imagine ever decriminalizing crack cocaine, drugs like that. But the whole question of should marijuana be decriminalized, I mean, that’s a conversation I think that we should engage in.”
Eric Holder says marijuana should be reclassified https://t.co/g9mqH8vwvMpic.twitter.com/Cjz4ir51yB
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 25, 2016
Marijuana currently falls under Schedule I, which is defined by the DEA as "the most dangerous class of drugs with a high potential for abuse and potentially severe psychological and/or physical dependence." Other drugs, such as cocaine, opium poppy, morphine, and codeine are listed within the “less-restrictive” Schedule II category of controlled substances.What confounds the situation even further is that the synthetic version of THC, dronabinol, is listed as Schedule III, or drugs with "moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence."THC is the ingredient in marijuana that qualifies it as a drug.
Current Attorney General Loretta Lynch is not as liberal on the issue. During her January 2015 confirmation hearing she said, “I can tell you that not only do I not support legalization of marijuana, it is not the position of the Department of Justice currently to support the legalization nor would it be the position should I become confirmed as attorney general.”
Here’s what Jesse Ventura and High Times Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Dan Skye have to say about Marijuana:
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