Politics
Trump’s CDC Director Said Marijuana Is A ‘Gateway Drug’ And Thinks It’s ‘Lunacy’ To Believe Cannabis Has Medical Uses
The next head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could be a vociferous opponent of marijuana reform if the former congressman that President-elect Donald Trump selected for the job is ultimately confirmed.
Trump tapped former Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) to lead CDC. While the agency’s role in dictating federal cannabis policy is somewhat limited, it has proactively taken steps to improve access to information about marijuana use in recent years—and it’s now positioned to be controlled by a person who clearly opposes reform.
During his time in Congress from 1995 to 2009, Weldon voted five times against spending amendments to protect state medical cannabis programs from Justice Department intervention.
He also voted for a 1997 resolution expressing opposition to medical marijuana legalization that stated “the consequences of illegal use of Schedule I drugs are well documented, particularly with regard to physical health, highway safety, and criminal activity.”
It further said “Congress continues to support the existing Federal legal process for determining the safety and efficacy of drugs and opposes efforts to circumvent this process by legalizing marijuana, and other Schedule I drugs, for medicinal use without valid scientific evidence and the approval of the Food and Drug Administration.”
Weldon’s views on the issue came into sharper focus during a House Government Reform subcommittee hearing in 2001, when he said it was “virtually lunacy” to believe cannabis has medical value, accusing advocates of being part of a “veiled attempt to legalize another substance for abuse,” including by using cancer and AIDS patients as a “prop” in their agenda.
“I don’t, in my clinical experience, recall ever seeing a medical indication for marijuana,” Weldon, who is a physician, said. “And that the drug, when smoked as recommended, probably causes lung cancer.”
“Why on Earth would this nation want to unleash another dangerous substance on our population? There are thousands and thousands of people who will not use marijuana because it’s illegal who will start using it if it is ever made legal,” he said. “To contend that there are medical indications for this drug is, in my opinion, patently absurd.”
“What’s really going on is people are trying to legalize the smoking of marijuana and they are trying to use cancer victims and AIDS victims as their prop to enable them to get it through,” Weldon said. “And, in my opinion, it is shameful.”
He said that he only encountered one patient who used medical marijuana to treat symptoms of lymphoma, and but “it was pretty obvious he was getting high, at least based on my clinical assessment.”
“When you think about it, there are a lot of countries in the world and there are a lot of pharmaceutical companies all over the world—and if there was some real potential for this drug, I would think that somewhere it would be researched and studied and demonstrated scientifically,” he said.
Weldon also peddled the gateway drug theory, while acknowledging that it’s “very hard to scientifically prove that marijuana leads to heroin.”
“But you can clearly demonstrate by just interviewing heroin users that a significant percentage of them start with marijuana, and therefore it is reasonable to conclude it’s a gateway drug,” he said.
Weldon joins a cast of prospective cabinet appointees with mixed views on marijuana.
For example, Trump’s pick to run the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also a medical marijuana skeptic, promoting claims that cannabis use is linked to cardiovascular issues and mental health problems for youth. He has also suggested that marijuana is a gateway drug.
In contrast, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president-elect’s choice for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that oversees FDA, supports ending marijuana prohibition and legalizing certain psychedelics for therapeutic purposes.
Meanwhile, pro-legalization former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was recently replaced by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), who opposed medical cannabis legalization in the state, as Trump’s choice to for U.S. attorney general.
A non-governmental advisory body that Trump is putting together will have two familiar names helming the ship: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. And while both are proponents of marijuana and psychedelics reform, giving hope to some reformers that the new entity will recommend scaling back the costly war on drugs, Ramaswamy has previously insisted on expanding the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
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Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
