Ex Drug Policy Adviser: Feds Won’t Allow Marijuana Legalization

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The Raw Story
Former federal drug policy adviser Kevin Sabet: “I can’t imagine the Administration is going to say it is going to be OK with retail sales”

A former senior drug policy adviser in the Obama Administration said on Sunday that it was “unlikely” the federal government will allow Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, despite the fact that citizens of both states voted to do so.

“I think the administration has been very clear and the President has been very clear that he is against legalization,” former drug policy adviser Kevin Sabet said on MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes. “From public health grounds, we know with legalization we are going to have a cheaper drug, more people are going to use it, it is just going to be more socially acceptable and according to the NIH [National Institutes of Health] that is a problem for one in six kids — it is not a problem for everybody, but it can be a problem on the roads and for IQ and learning, et cetera,” Sabet annoyingly bullshat.

Ballot initiatives to legalize the recreational use of marijuana by adults were approved by voters in Washington and Colorado last month, but cannabis remains a very illegal Schedule I controlled substance on the federal leevel.
“So the Administration has been very clear they’re going to be against it,” Sabet said, reported Eric W. Dolan at The Raw Story.

“What the Justice Department does with the very tricky legal questions — because each of these initiatives have like 10 different legal things that they’re trying to do — I think is the more interesting question,” Sabet claimed. “Federal law is federal law. I can’t imagine the Administration is going to say it is going to be OK with retail sales.”
Sabet added, however, that the Department of Justice could possibly decide that prosecuting those who grow marijuana for personal use “isn’t a good use of its resources,” as the Obama Administration has already said about those who follow state medical marijuana laws.


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