Joe Biden has snubbed supporters of marijuana legalization and other progressive drug policies in selecting his team to presumably, unless President Donald Trump's legal challenges prove successful, take over the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Washington Free Beacon reports.
"You have an incoming administration that hasn't been very progressive on marijuana," said Maritza Perez, who is the national affairs director for the progressive non-profit the Drug Policy Alliance. "Joe Biden has proposed rescheduling marijuana, which is insufficient. It doesn't address any of the issues that we've brought up. … So that gives us a lot of cause for concern."
Biden has chosen multiple former members of the Obama administration for his ONDCP transition team, which will be headed by former West Virginia public health commissioner Rahul Gupta. The Free Beacon notes that Gupta is “neither an anti-drug hardliner nor a rabid advocate,” a trait that is shared by the rest of the team, which includes Kimberlyn Leary of the Urban Institute and Regina LaBelle of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute.
Jacob Rich, policy analyst for the libertarian think tank the Reason Foundation, said that Leary and LaBelle both "seem like centrists who seek to reduce stigma and prosecution for drug addiction. LaBelle worked with [Barack] Obama to implement his opioid interventions, so I assume we'll see further reductions in prescribing.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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