Attorney General States Cannabis Should be Rescheduled

As poll watchers count down the days to a critical cannabis vote in November, interesting events on the topic of reform continue to have impact around the country.  

One key development recently came from the nation’s top cop, Attorney General Eric Holder, when he told Yahoo’s Katie Couric that he believes that cannabis is not as dangerous as heroine or opiates and thus, should probably be rescheduled.  When pressed on who was responsible for implementing federal change, however, Holder responded that he believed such responsibility lay with Congress.

The issue in fact has been one of federal debate on Capitol Hill all year. The dramatic vote in the House in the early summer to defund DEA enforcement of federal cannabis laws in states where the drug is now legal per state law is as close as the issue came on the federal lawmaking level, however.  

Holder’s comments, coming as they are on the eve of a resignation where his successor may be selected by executive mandate during the Congressional recess in the fall, has already ruffled feathers on both sides of the issue.  

The Obama Administration’s record on cannabis has been mixed to date.  Prosecutions for cannabis actually increased over the Bush years in the first Obama term.  Given the fact that the two so-called “state experiments” of Colorado and Washington State have been let to proceed so far, not to mention with even more pending recreational states, it is unlikely that the current downward trend of prosecutions will nudge back up any time soon.

Whether or not Holder’s statements about cannabis will carry any effect on a congressional level is still in the air, however, maybe his position on the topic can at least be the nudge to sway voters for this November election.