Former President Richard Nixon, despite declaring the war on drugs and rejecting a federal commission’s recommendation to decriminalize marijuana, admitted in a newly unearthed recording that he knew cannabis is “not particularly dangerous.”
“Let me say, I know nothing about marijuana,” Nixon said in a March 1973 White House meeting. “I know that it’s not particularly dangerous, in other words, and most of the kids are for legalizing it. But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.”
“The penalties should be commensurate with the crime,” Nixon said, arguing that a 30-year sentence in a cannabis case he recently heard about was “ridiculous.”
“I have no problem that there should be an evaluation of penalties on it, and there should not be penalties that, you know, like in Texas that people get 10 years for marijuana. That’s wrong,” the president said.
The comments, first reported by the New York Times, come as the federal government is reconsidering marijuana’s status as a restricted Schedule I drug.
The Department of Health and Human Services, after conducting a review initiated by President Joe Biden, recommended last year that cannabis should be moved to Schedule III. The Department of Justice agreed, publishing a proposed rescheduling rule in the Federal Register in May.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), however, has expressed hesitation about enacting the reform, however, and has scheduled a public hearing on the cannabis rescheduling matter for December 2, after the upcoming presidential election.
Nixon’s admission in the newly revealed tapes that marijuana is “not particularly dangerous” runs in contrast to his image as a drug warrior and undermines his and subsequent administrations’ decisions to classify it in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which is supposed to be reserved for substances with a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical value.
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