Politics
Marijuana Is Safer Than McDonald’s French Fries, Cory Booker Says
One of the senators leading the fight to legalize marijuana in Congress joked that the federal government might need to step in and enact restrictions on a more addictive substance: french fries from McDonald’s.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who has sponsored several bills to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), said that “I am the leader in the Senate for descheduling marijuana, but we should schedule McDonald’s french fries.”
“I don’t know what they put on them,” he said. “I think it is an illegal substance.”
The senator’s comments came at an event late last month where he was promoting his new book, “Stand.”
Booker was telling a story about his relationship with his driver, who has been with him since he served as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
“We’ve been in the car together for, God, 20 years, and we don’t have to speak to each other. He can just look in the rearview mirror and sense that I’m in one of those moments where I’ve got to do work, I got to read documents, whatever,” Booker said. “And so he, as we get ready to pass this McDonald’s, he looks in the rearview mirror and immediately, quickly, lurches into the drive through because he, using his telepathic powers, looked in the rearview mirror and saw the look of shame on my face, and he knew that I needed—physical addiction here—I needed some McDonald’s french fries.”
After ordering two servings of fries “with shame in my voice,” the senator said, he was “holding them like I’m from that movie, Lord of the Rings. My precious.”
This is not the first time the senator has compared the safety and legal status of marijuana and fast food.
Back in 2019 when he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, he shared an anecdote about visiting a Burger King where he loaded up on vegan burgers and fries, saying, similarly, that “I’m the guy that believes we should deschedule marijuana on the federal level, but maybe we should schedule those fries because they are very addictive.”
While Booker says he is vegan, it should be noted that the french fries McDonald’s serves in the U.S. contain natural beef flavor. Burger King’s fries contain no animal products, however.
When it comes to cannabis policy, Booker told Marijuana Moment in January that it’s “too early to tell” what the implications of President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Department of Justice to expedite the process of moving cannabis from Schedule I of the CSA to Schedule III will be—saying that while there are “things that look promising” about it, he is “very concerned about where the DOJ will land.”
It’s now been almost four months since the president issued that order, with no formal update from the Justice Department.
Booker added in the interview with Marijuana Moment that the administrative rescheduling move, if it is finalized, could potentially open to the door to advancing additional cannabis reforms in Congress such as the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking Act (SAFER) Banking Act, which would make it easier for marijuana businesses to access financial services.
“As a legislator, for me, that might get us an opening to some of the things that are stalled in Congress,” he said. “But ultimately that’s where I feel more comfortable, so that no matter who the president is, we have a structure that works to end the injustices and to liberate, frankly, an industry that has been severely hamstrung.”
The senator, who at one point threatened to block the advancement of industry-focused banking legislation if it did not include more equity-focused provisions, said that he’s since “been able to get into SAFER some of the elements that are important to me to be able to support it.”
Booker has also joined other Democratic senators in sponsoring legislation to federally legalize marijuana by descheduling it from the CSA.
