Former Attorney General Says Congress Should Reschedule Marijuana

The powers behind the continued prohibition of marijuana may exist somewhere within a super secret society, otherwise it seems the plant would have already been made legal at the national level. While spouting off conspiracy theories as the reasoning behind the federal government’s lack of enthusiasm to free the leaf may sound a bit extreme, a new interview with former Attorney General Eric Holder, a man who once had the authority to make the first move on federal legalization, suggests that darker forces may have prevented him from pulling the trigger.

In the past, Holder has said the concept of rescheduling is something that “we need to ask ourselves, and use science as the basis for making that determination,” but never once were his true feelings over weed being considered as dangerous as heroin revealed to the public… until now.

In an interview with PBS Frontline, the former head of the Justice Department confessed that he believes the time has come for Congress to get serious about eliminating the restrictions associated with the cannabis plant.

“I certainly think it ought to be rescheduled,” Holder said. “You know, we treat marijuana in the same way that we treat heroin now, and that clearly is not appropriate. So at a minimum, I think Congress needs to do that.”

Strangely, before retiring from his post in April of last year, Holder could have initiated the process of downgrading marijuana from its current Schedule I classification. But instead, he rode the Obama Administration’s “hands off approach” to allowing states to legalize for medicinal and recreational purposes, while also supporting the DEA’s choice to break Congressional rule by allowing them to raid the medical marijuana community.

But now, Holder says not only should Congress give marijuana an official Controlled Substances Act downgrade, but he also believes the federal government needs to create policies ensuring marijuana possession is no longer treated as a criminal offense.

“I think that certainly that ought to be a part of the conversation,” he told PBS in a special segment about heroin. “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.”

It should be made clear, at least for those of you without a sense of humor, that there probably aren’t any dark forces at work, other than political weasels most of us are already aware of, preventing the cannabis plant from becoming a part of free society. After all, Holder has suggested that rescheduling marijuana “is something for Congress to work on” for the past couple of years. He’s never taken any responsibility for the role he could have played in this action.

“It’s nice to have Holder’s support for this sensible policy change, but it would have been a lot better if he’d exercised the power to get marijuana rescheduling done while he was still in office,” Tom Angell, with the Marijuana Majority, told Cannabis Now. “We know that Holder and President Obama are good friends, so I hope the former attorney general encourages his former boss and his successor Loretta Lynch to follow through during these final months of the administration and get the job done. There’s absolutely no reason marijuana should be in Schedule I, and it would be absurd to keep passing the buck to Congress when federal law clearly gives the administration the power to act.”