Politics
As Trump Feels ‘Pressure’ To Reschedule Marijuana, Transportation Secretary Worries About Sending Wrong Message To Youth
The head of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is suggesting that if President Donald Trump rescheduled or legalized marijuana, which he is “getting pressure” to do, it could increase traffic safety risks, particularly involving young drivers.
In an interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy was asked about the proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) that Trump is actively considering, as well as the relationship between cannabis laws and roadway safety.
He noted that, with alcohol, there are “telltale signs” that a person is intoxicated behind the wheel and technology to detect impairment, but that’s not necessarily the case with marijuana.
“It’s hard with marijuana. We don’t have the systems in place to tell if you were smoking marijuana before you got the car,” he said. “So the systems aren’t there. At a time when culture is pushing and celebrating the use of marijuana, we’re not talking about the risk.”
Duffy also said he agrees that there’s “pressure” on the president to reschedule or legalize cannabis. But as the father of nine children and former prosecutor, he said he’s “not a supporter of legalizing it.”
As a prosecutor, Duffy said that he “didn’t send people to prison for a quarter ounce bag [or] eight ounce bag of marijuana. They got a city citation.”
“But to legalize it and to say it’s okay for our kids and our young people to smoke it—and it’s good for them when they get behind cars—it’s dangerous,” he said. “And listen, it’s taken lives.”
He added that cannabis is “really addictive.”
“And by the way, it’s not the 1960s marijuana, right?” the secretary said. “This is way more dangerous stuff, and then the lacing it with other materials that are incredibly dangerous.”
While there’s been growing, and increasingly bipartisan, support for enacting legalization, advocates have expressly called for education around the risks of impaired driving for anyone.
But the Fox News host’s question to the secretary was also framed around rescheduling, which would not federally legalize cannabis. Its primary effects would be to recognize the medical value of cannabis, free up certain research barriers and allow marijuana businesses to take federal tax deductions they’ve been barred from under Internal Revenue Service code 280E.
Duffy’s suggestion that legalization could heighten the risk of impaired driving has been contested, with research revealing mixed impacts of the reform at the state level and in other countries that have legalized.
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For what it’s worth, the head of a top federal traffic safety agency said during his Senate confirmation process that he was prepared to “double down” on increasing awareness about the risk of marijuana-impaired driving in partnership with the White House.
Relatedly, prohibitionists celebrated the inclusion of language in a major spending bill that would block the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) from supporting ads to “encourage illegal drug or alcohol use,” seemingly in response to previous marketing materials that leaned into cannabis culture to deter impaired driving.
Meanwhile, DOT recently proposed a new rule to update its drug testing guidelines, revising terminology around cannabis in a way that provides more specificity related to THC.
Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.
