By Steve Elliott
Hemp News
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he is “cautiously optimistic” about marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state, but added it’s tough to predict where legalization will be in 10 years. In the same interview, Holder, the nation’s top law enforcement official, admitted he had tried pot in college.
“I think there might have been a burst of feeling that what happened in Washington and Colorado was going to be soon replicated across the country,” Holder told Ryan J. Reilly of The Huffington Post. “I’m not sure that is necessarily the case.
“I think a lot of states are going to be looking to see what happens in Washington, what happens in Colorado before those decisions are made in substantial parts of the country,” he said.
The Department of Justice has allowed marijuana legalization to go forward in the two states where votes chose that course back in November 2012, and has issued guidance to federal prosecutors that is intended to open up banking services for cannabis businesses that are legal under state law.
“I think what people have to understand is that when we have those eight priorities that we have set out, it essentially means that the federal government is not going to be involved in the prosecution of small-time, possessory drug cases, but we never were,” Holder said. “So I’m not sure that I see a huge change yet; we’ve tried to adapt to the situation in Colorado with regard to how money is kept and transacted and all that stuff, and try to open up the banking system.”
“But I think, so far, I’m cautiously optimistic,” Holder said. “But as I indicated to both governors, we will be monitoring the progress of those efforts and if we conclude that they are not being done in an appropriate way, we reserve our rights to file lawsuits.” (Interesting that he chose the words “file lawsuits” instead of “mount raids.”)
Holder’s assessment of marijuana legalization is in contrast to that of Drug Enforcement Administration director Michele Leonhart, who pointedly criticized President Barack Obama for comparing marijuana to alcohol. Leonhart claimed this month that voters were “misled” when they voted to legalize at the state level, that Mexican drug lords were “setting up shop” in Washington and Colorado, and that the United States should have “never gone forward” with legalization.
Asked about his own personal history with cannabis, Holder admitted he’d used pot in college, calling it “youthful experimentation.”
“Yeah, I certainly have said in my four, five, whatever number confirmation hearings I’ve had that you fill out the forms, that I had ‘youthful experimentation’ — I think that was the phrase that we were told to use — when I was in college,” he said.
Holder also admitted that the Obama Administration has made the political decision not to reschedule marijuana from its current federal Schedule I classification — which means no accepted medical uses and a high risk of abuse — to a less restrictive classification, saying “when it comes to rescheduling, that should come from Congress.” The Attorney General has the authority to reschedule drugs without input from Congress.
Photo: Evan Vucci/AP
U.S.: Atty. Gen. Holder 'Cautiously Optimistic' About Legalization; Admits He's Tried Weed | Hemp ...
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