Bipartisan U.S. senators are reacting to the Trump administration’s move to federally reschedule cannabis in new interviews with Marijuana Moment—with Democrats saying the reform doesn’t go far enough, some Republicans expressing concerns and one GOP lawmaker discussing how she’s finally opening up to cannabis after speaking to friends who use it for medical purposes.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) told Marijuana Moment that he’s “no fan” of President Donald Trump’s cannabis rescheduling action, saying that “if you want to make it medical it needs to have standard research alongside of it, and it seems to have bypassed some of that.”
The GOP senator did acknowledge that, “in their defense, I would say we are owning up to the fact that it is not the same as heroin and cocaine.”
“Nonetheless, it has many, many problems and I want them to be fully researched,” Budd said. “I’ve just seen damage it’s done to people.”
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), in contrast, reacted to the Trump administration’s action to move marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III by saying “I don’t think it goes far enough.”
“I think we should be rescheduling and making it the equivalent of alcohol,” he told Marijuana Moment. “As is often the case when people are trying to please one constituency but don’t want to go too far and piss off a different constituency, they muddy the water. But we’ll figure it out.”
The Department of Justice announced last week that marijuana products regulated by a state medical cannabis license immediately moved to Schedule III, as did any marijuana products that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An administrative hearing scheduled for this summer will consider broader cannabis rescheduling, including of recreational products.
The senator acknowledged that there are some negative consequences of cannabis use, such as “some addictions—not very many—but there are some addictions.”
“It’s just like alcohol. It’s got benefits and downsides,” Hickenlooper said. “One thing that I think we are more confident of is it doesn’t imbue people, especially males, to violence. Females as well. One of the hidden benefits is it diminishes that kind of domestic violence.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) questioned the practicality of the administration’s current bifurcated scheduling approach to cannabis.
“You’re telling me that you’re going to have people really be honest as to whether or not this is recreational or medical?” she told Marijuana Moment. “How’s that working out?”
Another GOP senator, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said that while marijuana reform is “not my cup of tea,” it’s “not something that I am gonna have a fit and fall in it over.”
Lummis told Marijuana Moment that her position on cannabis is starting to shift after seeing how people she knows are using it therapeutically.
“I have friends that have multiple sclerosis and they can get some relief from medical marijuana,” she said. “They’ve explained to me that it is—you go to a really credible medical marijuana-only facility where you can get very specialized advice and treatment that really provides them some relief. Because of that, my personal feelings about it have softened a little bit.”
Lummis noted that her state of Wyoming allows neither medical nor recreational cannabis use and she said she hopes that doesn’t change, but she did acknowledge that the medical marijuana industry is becoming “more sophisticated.”
“Our neighbor Colorado has experience with both and I’m told by people who access dispensaries that are specific to medical use of marijuana that they are able to both dose and utilize marijuana for even very specific diseases within medical use,” the senator said. “Over the years it sounds like the use of marijuana for medical purposes has become much more sophisticated, although I just prefer not to go there. I get it. I really do.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), for his part, said politicians have long used cannabis “as a political football.”
“The question is whether they’re going to come down in a way that’s really effective,” he told Marijuana Moment, adding that the selective approach that treats medical and recreational cannabis differently under current federal law is “bad for the country.”
“What we want to do is ensure justice and fairness. In so many of these instances it’s like they just go by the wayside,” Wyden said Trump is definitely going to do it piecemeal.”
Meanwhile, a House appropriations subcommittee last week voted to block federal officials from taking further steps to carry out cannabis rescheduling.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told Marijuana Moment this week that she supports the Trump administration’s cannabis rescheduling move—even if it “doesn’t quite make all the wrongs right” by leaving behind people who “had their lives destroyed by the war on drugs.”
The LCB contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
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