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IPFS News Link • Drug War

Ex-AG Eric Holder: Pot 'Ought to Be Rescheduled'

• Ben Swann - Truth In Media

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently said that he believes that the federal government should end marijuana's classification alongside heroin as a hardcore Schedule 1 narcotic with no medical use.

When asked during a comprehensive Tuesday PBS interview on criminal justice reform if marijuana should be decriminalized, Holder replied, "I certainly think it ought to be rescheduled. You know, we treat marijuana in the same way that we treat heroin now, and that clearly is not appropriate. So at a minimum, I think Congress needs to do that. Then I think we need to look at what happens in Colorado and what happens in Washington."

He also said of decriminalization, "That conversation I think ought to be had with regard to marijuana."

Holder credited Tea Party Republicans with helping to create the right timing for his push for criminal justice reforms while in office and said, "That was a surprising thing. As much as the country was, or at least the federal government were drifting to the right, you were hearing things from people on the right that was supportive of this notion of the need for criminal justice reform. Now, coming at it from perhaps from a different angle, in some ways, people on the right were talking about bankrupting the government, making sure that we didn't spend as much money as we were on prisons — you know, $80 billion a year or so. … So although on the federal side, there was a drift to the right, a rise of the Tea Party caucus, even among them there was this notion that yeah, we need to do something about our criminal justice system. So the timing was right."


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