The White House is running a secret anti-weed committee


A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
The Trump administration has launched a sneak attack on Americans' growing support for marijuana.
To combat what White House meeting records call America's "partial, one-sided, and inaccurate" narrative in favor of marijuana, federal agencies were asked to compile "negative trends" about the drug and its "threats," BuzzFeed News has learned. It's all being done under the Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee, a secretive collective commandeering 14 federal agencies and the Drug Enforcement Agency to build an anti-weed rhetoric.
Acceptance of recreational marijuana use has grown over the past few years, with a recent Quinnipiac poll showing 63 percent of Americans in support of legalization. President Trump has tentatively echoed support as well, saying back in June that he'd "probably" back a bill to protect states' rights to legalize marijuana.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The committee instead seems to echo Attorney General Jeff Sessions' war-on-drugs rhetoric, BuzzFeed News points out. A July 27 committee meeting summary cited "an urgent need to message the facts about the negative impacts of marijuana use, production, and trafficking on national health, safety, and security." So the committee ordered agencies to deliver "the most significant data demonstrating negative trends" regarding weed for a briefing with Trump "on marijuana threats," the summary said. The goal is to "turn the tide on increasing marijuana use," per the meeting summary.
The committee only explicitly indicated that it was looking for negative information on marijuana use and laws, BuzzFeed News' analysis revealed. A White House response to the story said the committee is part of the administration's "internal, deliberative process" to "ensure consistency with the president's agenda."
Read more about the White House's war on green at BuzzFeed News.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
-
Biden creates White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention
Speed Read The office will be led by Vice President Kamala Harris
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Chairman Jordan
Cartoons
By The Week Staff Published
-
10 things you need to know today: September 23, 2023
Daily Briefing Sen. Bob Menendez rejects calls to resign following indictment, Ukraine launches missile attack on occupied Crimean city, and more
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Biden creates White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention
Speed Read The office will be led by Vice President Kamala Harris
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Rishi Sunak lambasts China after allegations of spy in UK Parliament
Speed Read
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Judge denies Mark Meadows' request to move Georgia case to federal court
Speed Read
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson dies at 75
Speed Read
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Clarence Thomas officially discloses trips from billionaire GOP donor
Speed Read
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Judge schedules Trump federal election plot trial for crowded March 2024
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published
-
Trump surrenders in Georgia election subversion case
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin ally-turned-rival, presumed dead in plane crash
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published