President Donald Trump’s choice to serve as the next White House drug czar has called medical marijuana a “fantastic” treatment option for seriously ill patients and said she doesn’t have a “problem” with legalization, even if she might not personally agree with the policy.
Trump picked Sara Carter, a journalist known for her coverage of drug cartels, to serve as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
The president said Carter has “been on the front lines of this International Fight for decades” and ” will lead the charge to protect our Nation.”
Given the role of ONDCP director in setting and carrying out the administrative agenda on drug policy issues, the fact that Carter has gone on the record enthusiastically endorsing medical cannabis will likely be welcome news for advocates amid the Senate confirmations of officials with a mixed bag of marijuana records.
Under longstanding federal statute, the drug czar is prohibited from endorsing the legalization of Schedule I drugs in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), including marijuana.
“The Director…shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 812 of this title and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that— (A) is listed in schedule I of section 812 of this title; and (B) has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration.”
Trump himself has previously expressed support for medical cannabis, as well as rescheduling of marijuana under federal law.
While Carter has spoken often about various marijuana policy issues—focusing attention on illicit trafficking and illegal grow operations on U.S. land, for example—her public comments on how she personally feels about the topic are limited. What she did say last year in an episode of her podcast, The Sara Carter Show, signaled that she draws a distinction between legally regulated and illicitly supplied marijuana.
“I don’t have any problem if it’s legalized and it’s monitored,” she said. “I mean, I may have my own issues of how I feel about that, but I do believe that cannabis for medicinal purposes and medical reasons is a fantastic way of handling—especially for people with cancer and other illnesses, you know—of handling the illness and the side effects of the medication and those illnesses. So I’m not saying we’ve gotta make it illegal.”
If Carter is ultimately confirmed by the Senate, she will become the second drug czar in a row who has voiced support for medical marijuana, following former President Joe Biden’s ONDCP director Rahul Gupta, who worked as a consultant for a cannabis businesses and also oversaw implementation of West Virginia’s medical marijuana program.
Carter, for her part, has discussed cannabis at length in various podcast conversations and media interviews, sounding the alarm about the risk of pesticides and other contaminants in marijuana grown and sold by Chinese cartels.
Last year she talked about the issue with Derek Maltz, a then-retired Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official who is currently serving as acting administrator of the agency as the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings on Trump’s permanent pick, Terrance Cole.
In an X post about the interview with Maltz, Carter said he exposed how “Chinese marijuana grow operations are using hazardous chemicals as pesticides.”
“Combined with an extremely high level of THC, this marijuana is full of toxins that could seriously hurt an unsuspecting smoker,” she said. “Is this behind the increased levels of mental illness and anxiety in America’s young people?”
Maltz also said during their conversation that Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, “hijacked” the administration’s marijuana rescheduling process from DEA by breaking with precedent and signing proposed rule instead of then-DEA administrator Anne Milgram.
In 2022, U.S. Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) applauded Carter, who worked with his office to bring attention to illicit grow operations in his district, leading to a local law enforcement investigation.
Carter gave the congressman credit, saying “your work in taking down the illegal marijuana grows has stopped cartels from exploiting your community, those people forced to work on them and the [money].”
In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in 2021, she also talked about her work with Garcia—including accompanying him on a helicopter to survey “miles and miles and miles of vast, sophisticated illegal grows worth tens of millions of dollars.”
Cartels have “become extremely more brazen. They’re not afraid of hiding it,” she said. “They don’t hide it because they don’t feel that they’ll ever be held accountable for it.”
In a sense, Carter has seemed to implicitly suggest at multiple times that she supports regulated access to cannabis as a means of promoting public safety and health. Whether and how that implied position would influence federal policy if she’s confirmed and assumes the ONDCP director role is yet to be seen.
On her social media, Carter has previously shared links—without commentary—to news stories about a variety of marijuana-related issues. In addition to her focus on illicit cartel grows, she’s also posted about congressional and state-level legalization votes, staffers in the Biden administration being fired over past cannabis use, Democratic presidential candidates’ support for legalization, the advancement of cannabis banking legislation in Congress and state policy developments such as Alaska’s legalization of cannabis cafes.
Kevin Sabet, president of the prohibitionist organization Smart Approach to Marijuana (SAM), released a statement on Carter’s nomination, saying she “knows well the destruction drugs and their consequences place on individuals, families, communities, and society at large.”
“We hope Ms. Carter will focus primarily on prevention, treatment, and recovery, and recognize the role today’s highly potent marijuana is playing in the destruction of young minds,” he said. “Further, it was refreshing to see Ms. Carter’s reporting on issues as varied as transnational drug cartels to foreign-involved underground marijuana operations, representing her breadth of familiarity on these issues.”
Meanwhile, during a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech in 2019, Carter talked about a trend she claimed young people were participating in, hosting “Skittles parties” where “they bring pills and put them into bowls and everybody picks a pill that they want and takes them.”
“I mean, it’s kind of shocking when I heard about this, randomly taking pills,” she said.
Carter is the latest in a string of Trump nominees who hold key responsibilities when it comes to federal drug policy matters. And the president’s picks, several of which have already been confirmed, run the gamut on cannabis.
For example, the president picked former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) to run DOJ, and the Senate confirmed that choice. During her confirmation hearings, Bondi declined to say how she planned to navigate key marijuana policy issues. And as state attorney general, she opposed efforts to legalize medical cannabis.
Adding to the ongoing uncertainty around the fate of the rescheduling proposal Biden initiated, Trump’s nominee to lead DEA has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth.
Trump recently nominated a vociferously anti-cannabis official to serve as the lead attorney at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), drawing praise from prohibitionists.
While HHS under the Biden administration has already recommended rescheduling cannabis following a scientific review, that process has been delayed, raising questions about the potential influence of new administrative appointees.
HHS’s general counsel is responsible for providing legal advice, interpreting regulatory policies and overseeing litigation involving the agency, among other roles, and so if Stuart is confirmed by the Senate he could be key in any future agency interpretations of the Controlled Substances Act’s requirements when it comes to marijuana’s scheduling status.
By contrast to the HHS general counsel nominee, Mike Stuart, the recently Senate-confirmed secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was previously vocal about his support for marijuana legalization.
Despite that stated support, however, following his confirmation Kennedy said last month that he is “worried about” the normalization of high-potency marijuana and that he feels its use can have “really catastrophic impacts” on people, but that state-level legalization can facilitate research into its harms and benefits.
The comments came on the same day that Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) said he received a commitment from Kennedy to “follow the science on the harms of marijuana.”
Ricketts had already disclosed earlier this month that he spoke to Kennedy about the the “importance” of “preventing the expansion of marijuana.” Now he says “RFK committed to me that he would follow the science on the harms of marijuana.”
Despite Kennedy’s history of advocating for cannabis legalization, he said last month that he will defer to DEA on marijuana rescheduling in his new role.
Meanwhile, although Trump himself has not publicly spoken about marijuana policy since taking office for his second term, the White House said in a recent fact sheet about an executive order he signed that the move to decriminalize marijuana in Washington, D.C. is an example of a “failed” policy that “opened the door to disorder.”
Stakeholders have been trying to leverage Trump’s stated support for rescheduling, appealing to him by framing the issue as a means to support veterans and patients in a way that they hope will motivate the president to advocate for the reform from the Oval Office. Regardless of how other officials in his administration feel, the thinking goes, a mandate from Trump would not go unheeded.
To that point, a marijuana industry-funded political action committee (PAC) is attacking Biden’s cannabis policy record as well as the nation of Canada, with new ads promoting sometimes misleading claims about the last administration while making the case that Trump can deliver on reform.
GOP Senator Paints Dire Picture Of Medical Marijuana Legalization In His State, Saying Voters Didn’t Understand ‘Consequences’
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