During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today on the nomination of Terrance Cole to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina voiced strong support today for legalizing and regulating cannabis nationwide.
(Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images).
“I feel like we should get to a better place to allow states to, if they choose, have marijuana dispensed for medical purposes or recreational purposes,” said Tillis. He described the current situation as “confusing to the population” and “confusing to law enforcement,” and questioned whether Congress had reached a point where it should “create a framework that deals with crop protection, sort of a tobacco framework.”
Tillis raised concerns about the influx of illicit substances into both legal and gray markets, specifically noting that some legal Delta-8 THC products are now reportedly more potent than illegal marijuana. “There’s going to be a race for potency,” he warned, “and what happens when they run out of gas and they need to add something else to it?”
He stressed the public health and law enforcement risks of unregulated high-potency cannabis products and suggested that a lack of federal oversight could lead to contamination with substances like fentanyl. “If we don’t have a national framework… I think it’s a looming public health crisis,” he said.
Tillis concluded by saying he looks forward to supporting Cole’s nomination and to receiving responses to cannabis-related questions that he says the Biden administration failed to answer.
