Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is at the top of her list in a hypothetical “dream blunt rotation,” while also hinting that she’s had conversations with Biden administration officials about reclassifying marijuana.
In an interview posted by Pod Save America on Monday, the senator talked about her recent push for administrative cannabis reform that goes further than simple rescheduling, and the former Obama staffer who hosted the discussion followed up by asking who she’s most and least likely to invite to a blunt session out of a list of pre-selected candidates.
Warren added nuance to the cannabis-themed question by caveating that her choice “has nothing to do with weed,” and she could just as well be picking someone she’d like to get a pedicure with.
But playing along, she enthusiastically selected The Rock as her co-session partner four times over, instead of picking four different people from the list that also included President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Snoop Dogg and Taylor Swift.
“I’m just doing The Rock four times,” she said, laughing.
Warren declined to make a pick when former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau gave her a list of potential people to form her “nightmare blunt rotation.” For that hypothetical session, the choices were Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Mark Zuckerberg.
“I’m starting to feel a little sick,” she joked. “That is really awful to contemplate.”
The game followed a more substantive conversation about the senator’s advocacy for federal marijuana descheduling amid an ongoing administrative review into the potential reclassification of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Asked whether she’s discussed the policy issue directly with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Justice Department or administration in general, Warren said she “won’t talk about private conversations” while also winking, which Favreau pointed out—signaling some level of communication.
The senator has been fielding several questions recently about marijuana legalization since she led a letter with 11 colleagues imploring DEA to deschedule cannabis. During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this month, for example, she stressed that “it shouldn’t be that hard” to legalize marijuana, while dodging another lighthearted question about whether she was high herself.
For the Pod Save America appearance, she said that, “if the Republicans didn’t block us, we’d run this through Congress and you just legalize it.”
“There still could be regulations around it like there is around alcohol—you’ve got to be a certain age, you got to have certain disclosures about the potency and so on, I’m all for that,” Warren said. “But I really want to say to the DEA: Guys, come on. It is not 1958, and we don’t need to be terrified of this stuff. Let’s just deschedule it and go forward.”
The senator was asked to clarify if it’s her understanding that the administration or DEA has the authority to deschedule cannabis, and she said “they clearly have the power.”
“They are the ones who are responsible for scheduling,” she said. “We’re doing this all the time now. In places where the Republicans are blocking us in Congress, then we’re moving forward on the other side. We’re moving forward in and trying to do what we can administratively.”
While DEA holds scheduling authorities and is actively reviewing a recommendation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to move cannabis to Schedule III of the CSA, the idea that the Biden administration could take executive action to fully legalize marijuana without Congress has been challenged by experts.
Warren also suggested that the current Schedule I status of cannabis means that “you can’t run tests on it.” Scientists have long criticized the research barriers imposed by a Schedule I designation, but despite those unique bureaucratic complications, it is still possible to conduct marijuana research.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris’s office has been reaching out to people who’ve received a pardon for marijuana possession under the president’s clemency proclamations that he issued in conjunction with the scheduling directive—seeking assurance that the Justice Department certification process is going smoothly and engaging in broader discussions about cannabis policy reform, according to a pardon recipient who was contacted.
Harris separately faced criticism earlier this month after sharing a video where she claimed the administration had “changed federal marijuana policy.” While Biden has issued thousands of simple possession pardons and directed the ongoing review into federal cannabis scheduling, the law itself has not changed at this point, and campaign pledges to decriminalize marijuana have yet gone unfulfilled.
Rumors recently swirled that the DEA’s scheduling announcement would come earlier this month, but that did not happen and a Biden administration official told Marijuana Moment that they’d “wave off” the speculation about imminent action.
Also, a recent survey found that voters’ impression of the president jumped a net 11 points after hearing about the possible implications of the rescheduling review—and that includes an 11-point favorability swing among young voters 18-25 who will be critical to his reelection bid.
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