White House shows signs of easing marijuana restrictions

Pot was hardly difficult to find on campuses, and elsewhere, back when it was not just illegal but targeted by politicians as a menace to society.

In fact, it often found you, if you stopped in at parties or even small gatherings.

When I was in college, there was a fear of being busted by police and getting kicked out of school or fired from your job. It made otherwise law-abiding kids see the cops as their enemy. 

But that was light-years ago.

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Now the Trump administration is strongly considering loosening the restrictions on weed.

It still amazes me to drive up Connecticut Avenue here in Washington and see cannabis shops, with such names as MrGreen and Blunt–and Taste Budz, a few blocks from the Capitol–openly peddling the stuff. And it’s branded under highly marketable names, such as Violet Sky and Hash Burger.

A well-reported story by the Free Press says President Trump is considering reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule I drug to Schedule III. That would put it in the same category as anabolic steroids, ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. 

The move “would ease restrictions on it but stop short of making pot entirely legal.”

Of course, medical marijuana is already legal in 40 states and the District of Columbia, and allowed for recreational use in D.C. and 24 states, from New York to Colorado.

So where is the opposition?

Uh, there isn’t that much.

And the White House is being open about this.

Marijuana advocate Alex Bruesewitz tells the Free Press that the shift to Schedule III “keeps cannabis as a controlled substance but allows for more testing for medicinal purposes,” and is a “politically savvy move” with strong public support.

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If that’s true, it’s because generations have at least tried weed since the 1960s and ’70s and dismiss the dark warnings about how dangerous it is and how it would  lead to the harder stuff. They scoffed at the infamous 1936 film “Reefer Madness.”

Richard Nixon, in his war on drugs a half-century ago, tried to associate hippies with pot and Blacks with heroin. 

As top aide John Ehrlichman, who went to prison for Watergate, said in a 1994 interview: “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Ronald Reagan, who as a candidate called pot “probably the most dangerous drug in the United States,” wrote in his diary that he got mad when watching Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton toking up in the movie “9 to 5.” His wife Nancy later launched her “Just Say No” campaign.

By the time Bill Clinton was running for the office, his brief experimentation with pot–that he had tried it but “didn’t inhale”–had become a punchline.

Some critics have definitely emerged. Pete Sessions, a GOP congressman from Texas, recently wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi with eight other lawmakers, saying that rescheduling “would send a message to kids that marijuana is not harmful.” 

Donald Trump doesn’t smoke, drink or take drugs, in reaction to his brother’s death from alcoholism. But the White House seems on board.

Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio took a survey in March that found 66 percent of those questioned backed legalized marijuana, and 70 percent supported rescheduling the drug.

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A senior White House official is quoted as saying: “For a lot of the base, it’s an issue like gay marriage that people have gotten comfortable with. It’s good politics.” A decision is expected by year’s end.

But as with virtually every Beltway issue, well-heeled lobbyists are part of the process. Pot smoking, once an underground pastime, is now a big-bucks business.

Bruesewitz’s consulting firm, X Strategies, is being paid $300,000 by American Rights and Reform, a pro-cannabis group, for “media” services. Another large PR firm, Mercury Public Affairs, represents the US Cannabis Council.

The size of this burgeoning industry is estimated at $38 billion last year–real money, even by jaded Washington standards.

I confess to some mixed feelings. For one thing, today’s cannabis is many times  more powerful than the nickel and dime bags that used to circulate.

I always felt pot’s milder effects were preferable to alcohol, especially when it comes to driving. It does give you the munchies, though. And as a parent I say, what about homework? 

While the drinking age has long since been raised to 21, that doesn’t seem to stop those several years younger from obtaining beer, wine and liquor.

But with so many millions having at least sampled marijuana over the decades, it was probably inevitable that they wouldn’t want it to remain in the same federal category as heroin, cocaine and – what is truly a killer drug – fentanyl.