Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, has been confirmed by the Senate as the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
\nKennedy has a long track record of supporting drug policy reform, including cannabis reform, and has often spoken about his own struggles with substance abuse. During his candidacy for President of the United States in 2023, he said that if elected, he would \u201cdecriminalize cannabis at the federal level\u201d, and that states should be able to decide their own cannabis laws without federal interference. In an appearance on C-SPAN months later, he went even further when he called for federally legalizing marijuana and instituting a tax to fund drug rehabilitation and treatment centers. However, since being nominated by President Trump to lead HHS, he has been less clear about his plans for supporting federal cannabis reform. In fact, his most recent comments on cannabis suggest that he may be changing his tune on actively supporting federal cannabis decriminalization and legalization. When asked during his Senate confirmation hearings if he would commit to working with the DOJ and DEA to resume the process of rescheduling marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, he stated that he would \u201cdefer to the DOJ and DEA on the allocation of their resources and the development of their priorities.\u201d In his first post-confirmation interview on Fox News, Kennedy remarked that, \u201cI hear stories all the time of the impacts of marijuana on people\u2014and the really catastrophic impacts on them.\u201d However, he did also acknowledge that state legalization efforts can help open opportunities to conduct more research on the health impacts and medical efficacy of cannabis. How Kennedy will choose to engage with federal cannabis policy as HHS secretary remains to be seen. While his long-standing support for a more humane and health-focused approach to drug policy is encouraging, his seeming inclination to defer to Congress and other federal agencies on key issues regarding cannabis policies bring into question whether he will ultimately act as a reliable ally in the fight to end federal cannabis prohibition. As MPP continues to push for legalization at the state and federal levels, it is at least encouraging that we are increasingly seeing figures with more nuanced and sensible views on cannabis in senior positions that can impact the government\u2019s approach to cannabis policy.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of the Marijuana Policy Project(MPP).<\/p>\n
“Dont forget Betty Ford was a Republican!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, has been confirmed by the Senate as the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Kennedy has a long track record of supporting drug policy reform, including cannabis reform, and has often spoken about his own struggles with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MPP-30-Years-Logo-blue.png?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefreeworldremedy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}