Reporter Grills Karine Jean-Pierre On Biden’s Push To Reclassify Marijuana As A Lower-Risk Drug

7 months ago

During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about whether the White House has been in touch with Columbia or other universities amid protests on campus and their attempts to reclassify marijuana.

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00:00 Thanks, Corrine. To follow on that, has anyone from the administration been in touch with

00:04 administrators, leaders at Columbia or any of these universities that are seeing these

00:08 protests? I don't have any calls to read out at this

00:10 time. Obviously, we're closely monitoring the situation. We're getting regular updates,

00:17 and we're just going to -- I'm just going to keep it there. I just don't have anything

00:20 to share as far as calls or readouts. On another topic, has the White House received

00:24 the recommendation from the DEA to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I drug to a Schedule

00:28 III drug? Can you comment on that? Yeah. So here's what I can say. I can say,

00:32 as you know, last year, I believe in early fall, the President asked HHS and Department

00:38 of Justice to look at reclassifying marijuana, to go through that process. That process continues.

00:45 DOJ is looking into that. I just want to be really mindful there. They're moving with

00:49 that process. Don't have anything more to say, and so we'll just leave it there.

00:54 But you can't confirm that it's now at O&E for the next phase of this?

00:58 All I can tell you is I would refer to DOJ. What the President directed HHS and Department

01:03 of Justice to do is to look at the classification of marijuana. Let's not forget, this is something

01:08 that the President talked about during his campaign, and he said no person, no American

01:14 who possess marijuana, only possesses marijuana, should go to jail. It is affecting communities

01:21 across the country, including communities of color, and so this is why he asked HHS

01:28 and Department of Justice to look into this, and that's what they're doing.

01:30 You mentioned campaign. Is this something the White House thinks can help the President

01:33 right now? Well, I'm talking about the campaign.

01:35 I know, but we're not looking forward to that. I appreciate that, but I'm talking about the

01:40 campaign and his ... This is a commitment, a promise that he made when he decided to

01:46 run back in 2019, and he was very clear why it was important, he believed, to ask Department

01:53 of Justice and HHS to review this, and that review continues, and so don't want to get

01:58 ahead of what DOJ is, how they're moving forward.

Reporter Grills Karine Jean-Pierre On Biden’s Push To Reclassify Marijuana As A Lower-Risk Drug

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