Martin O’Malley will declassify marijuana as a schedule 1 drug

On July 31, 2015, Mar­tin O’Mal­ley released his white paper on Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Reform, which says, “As pres­i­dent, Gov­er­nor O’Malley will: … Declas­si­fy Mar­i­jua­na as a Sched­ule I Drug.”

But, the sen­tence imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing that one is less clear, “O’Malley will direct the Attor­ney Gen­er­al to move to reclas­si­fy mar­i­jua­na, while sup­port­ing bipar­ti­san con­gres­sion­al efforts to leg­isla­tive­ly reclas­si­fy mar­i­jua­na as a Sched­ule II drug.”

The week before this white paper was released I got a call from a field orga­niz­er for O’Mal­ley, Kennedy Bre­anne Green, who asked me to meet her for lunch on Mon­day, August 3, 2015.  I told Kennedy I would only meet with her if the top­ic was mar­i­jua­na’s sched­ul­ing.

When I met with Kennedy, she showed me the white paper, and sure enough it says Mar­tin O’Mal­ley will declas­si­fy mar­i­jua­na.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sen­tence imme­di­ate­ly after that seems to wig­gle.  I told Kennedy I was uncom­fort­able with the words “move to.”  I said it should just say “O’Mal­ley will direct the Attor­ney Gen­er­al to reclas­si­fy mar­i­jua­na.”  Kennedy said she would try to get some clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

On Fri­day, August 7, 2015, I got a call from Mar­tin O’Mal­ley’s son Will.  He agreed with me and said he would try to get clar­i­fi­ca­tion from his father.  Lat­er that day, I got a call telling me that Jor­dan Sabine, a field orga­niz­er from the O’Mal­ley cam­paign would meet me for lunch on Tues­day, August 11, 2015.  How­ev­er, the field orga­niz­er, Kiera, who showed up on Tues­day was not Jor­dan Sabine and Kiera had no idea what I had been talk­ing to Kennedy and Will about.

So, I’m not exact­ly encour­aged by this.  It sounds to me like O’Mal­ley is wig­gling.  On the oth­er hand, I haven’t seen any­thing as encour­ag­ing as this from any of the oth­er can­di­dates.  O’Mal­ley just might get my sup­port on cau­cus night, but I’m still con­sid­er­ing my options.