8-30-2023 10:49pm

Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Cannabis, Psychedelics Not Ready for Prime Time

Chris Edwards Editor

Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Cannabis, Psychedelics Not Ready for Prime Time per a salon panel discussion in Alamogordo, New Mexico hosted by KALHRadio.org and AlamogordoTownNews.com.

Most people in Alamogordo, New Mexico polled in a recent conversation on presidential candidates don’t even know who Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is let alone that he is running for president.

In a room with 15 individuals who were assembled to discuss politics and the local and national level in Otero County New Mexico; the topics ranged from infrastructure, to local Democratic Party disfunction (Democratic Party of New Mexico suspended local party operations), modern Republicanism, to the politics of cannabis and presidential candidates.

A bit of the dialogue focused on cannabis with the growth of the industry and the number of new dispensaries that have recently opened in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Specific to Robert F. Kennedy Jr who is making a bid for the White House as a 2024 Democratic presidential candidate. We reviewed his drug policy record for discussion. It is thin yet he has come out in support of bold marijuana and psychedelics reforms since entering the race.

The son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy has pledged to legalize cannabis and psychedelics if elected, and he’s taken a swipe at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate, for opposing marijuana decriminalization.

His candidacy has been met with skepticism, especially in light of his questioning of vaccine efficacy and apparent appeal with certain conservative factions of the electorate, he has put drug policy reform in the spotlight a number of times since announcing that he was challenging incumbent President Joe Biden to gain the national spotlight.

Kennedy has worked as an environmental attorney and writer, but he has not held elected office before, so he does not have a legislative record on drug policy issues unlike a majority of the candidates on both sides of the party divide.

“I will decriminalize cannabis at the federal level,” he said in June 2023. “Current situation with contradictory state along with federal laws is absurd. States should be able to decide without federal interference.”

That month, he also discussed his own 40 years of sobriety during an interview on the podcast “Club Random with Bill Maher,” as he declined Maher’s offer to smoke with him on the show. He didn’t appear to mind the host’s indulgence over the course of the chat, however.

During the town hall event with NewsNation, the candidate talked about his own struggles with addiction during his youth and the lessons that he’s taken away from his decades in recovery. While he said he’s generally not one to recommend a drug to treat substance misuse, he’s seen in his own family how psychedelics can facilitate the type of psychological healing needed for long-term recovery.

“I would legalize psychedelic drugs—some form of legalization,” he said, adding that he doesn’t necessarily envision a commercial market where anyone could visit a shop to buy substances like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA, but that there should be regulated access.

“I’m going to decriminalize marijuana on a federal basis, allow the states to regulate it, continue to tax it federally and use those taxes to fund the recovery programs,” he said. “And I would do the same thing for psychedelic drugs, which I do not think should be criminalized.”

With respect to psychedelics, the candidate said that he’s reviewed studies on the substances, and “there’s so many people being helped in different ways by them, and we have to make it easier—maybe to prescribe them or to give them through therapeutically.”

“I don’t know about just buying them in stores. I have to look at all that,” he said. “But in one way or another, we need to make it easy for people to use them in ways that could benefit our children and could benefit everybody. I’ve seen it in my own family, the benefits of it.”

He said that he’s “seen miraculous recoveries from psychedelic drugs from PTSD from veterans who have who have used it, from people who have suffered severe depression, OCD and many, many other injuries.”

“I’m not saying blanket legalization—but we need to make it easy for psychiatrists and therapists who are trained to be able to use this on their patients [as] an experiment and see if we get good results,” Kennedy said.

He was also asked about the stigmatizing way that some have described the current president’s son’s struggles with substance misuse and said simply that addiction “is a tragedy and it’s cunning, it’s incomprehensible, it’s baffling and it’s really difficult to deal with. I wish him and his family the best.”

In May, he blamed U.S. policies, including the war on drugs, for exacerbating problems with immigration and promised to “change” federal laws, accordingly.

After hearing his comments and drug policies the room of 15 was asked if their opinions changed on consideration of Robert F Kennedy Jr for president? The room was unanimous that there should be another Democratic alternative, that he is not ready for prime time.