Former President Donald Trump expressed an openness to decriminalizing marijuana during a press conference Thursday, marking a shift in his stance on the matter.
When asked by a reporter about whether he supports legalizing cannabis, Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, observed that many states have already made non-medicinal marijuana legal.
“As we legalize it, I start to agree a lot more because it’s being legalized all over the country,” Trump said.
Florida, Trump’s home state, is set to consider legalizing cannabis through a ballot initiative in November. The measure will pass if it receives support from 60% of voters, and Trump said he would “be making a statement about that fairly soon.”
He also lamented defendants who are imprisoned over recreational cannabis, observing that it is legalized throughout the country.
“Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s awfully hard to have people all over the jails that are in jail right now for something that’s legal,” Trump said. “So I think obviously there’s a lot of sentiment to doing that.”
While Trump was in office, he was largely antimarijuana until mid-2018, when he said he would “probably end up supporting” a bill that would defer marijuana legalization to states. A marijuana blog recently described Trump as “cannabis ambivalent,” noting he had taken mixed positions on it, though the former president has never directly said he would support a nationwide legalization.
The Department of Justice completed a proposal to reschedule cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act last month, and now it is in the hands of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The timeline for the DEA to finalize the proposal is unclear.
The Schedule I category is reserved for drugs that have no medical use. The government transferring marijuana out of that category would not legalize it, but the move would effectively deem it less dangerous. Pending legislative proposals, such as the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, aim to deschedule cannabis, which would make it legal.
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Public interest in decriminalizing recreational marijuana has remained steady for the last several years, according to a Pew Research Center poll published in March.
The poll found that a majority of the poll’s respondents, 57%, supported legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes. It found that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe legalization would help local economies and be good for the criminal justice system.
