Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett is siding with President Donald Trump on much of the administration’s agenda, but drawing a firm line on marijuana policy. (Stephanie Kuykendal/Getty Images)
Bennett served as President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988, after leading the National Endowment for the Humanities earlier in the Reagan years.
He later became the first director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy — the role commonly known as the nation’s "drug czar" — under President George H.W. Bush's administration, where he advocated for a "war on drugs," including promoting the administration's national drug control strategy that emphasized drug prevention and enforcement of laws against drug use.
He told Fox News Digital that he is a supporter of the majority of Trump's policies, but cannot back rescheduling marijuana, citing its effects on students and serving as a "gateway drug" to addiction and crime.
The former Reagan official told Fox News Digital that marijuana use among young adults overwhelmingly has gone unchecked, as the current culture promotes and accepts the use of cannabis to the detriment of youth health.
"Marijuana clouds focus and attention, which you obviously should have if you're going to school," he said. "So it clouds that, it interferes with that, it inhibits that. It is also the gateway drug. It leads to the use of other drugs. Almost anybody who uses a so-called ‘more dangerous’ drug than marijuana has entered through the portal called marijuana."
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President Ronald W. Reagan with wife Nancy beside him, speaking in front of Cabinet Members, including Donald T. Regan, William J. Bennett, Richard E. Lyng, Elizabeth Dole, John S. Herrington, Samuel R. Pierce Jr., William E. Simon, Donald P. Hodel, Malcolm Baldrige and George P. Shultz. (Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images)
The former secretary of education noted that Trump himself is a teetotaler of drugs and alcohol, while advocating he apply that mentality more broadly.
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"America's always been a self-correcting society. We do a lot of dumb things and bad things, but then we correct, and we can correct on this one," he said.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/war-drugs-crusader-bill-bennett-breaks-trump-white-house-moves-ease-federal-marijuana-rules