Dear Governor Hutchinson, I read your press release criticizing President Biden for pardoning all federal cannabis possession convictions and requesting that the Attorney General and HHS Secretary initiate the administrative process to reconsider cannabis’s schedule I status under federal law. Your arguments—that President Biden “waved the flag of surrender in the fight to save lives from drug abuse” and “ignored the science that is behind the different categories of drugs—aren’t just wrong. They’re dangerous. I write to explain why that is so and in the hopes that you’ll join our efforts to pursue
The British Indian Hemp Drug CommissionReport (1894), La Guardia Commission Report (1944), the Baroness Wooten Report (1968), the Canadian Government’s Le Dain Commission (1970), and the Shaffer Report (1972) reflect one hundred years’ worth of research concluding that marijuana, America’s favorite intoxicant, is relatively harmless. Certainly edible and concentrated cannabis products need better regulation. Compared to the wholesale problems posed by Big Pharma’s FDA-approved opiates, Chinese, and Mexican opiates that kill more Americans each year than died in the Vietnam War, marijuana is a retail problem.
You would think as the former head of DEA, Asa is smart enough to know this stuff already.
The British Indian Hemp Drug CommissionReport (1894), La Guardia Commission Report (1944), the Baroness Wooten Report (1968), the Canadian Government’s Le Dain Commission (1970), and the Shaffer Report (1972) reflect one hundred years’ worth of research concluding that marijuana, America’s favorite intoxicant, is relatively harmless. Certainly edible and concentrated cannabis products need better regulation. Compared to the wholesale problems posed by Big Pharma’s FDA-approved opiates, Chinese, and Mexican opiates that kill more Americans each year than died in the Vietnam War, marijuana is a retail problem.
are not insurmountable.