US - Federal: In his first public comments on cannabis since being confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F Kennedy Jr.
said “I hear stories all the time of the impacts of marijuana on people – and really catastrophic impacts on them,” but he also said that this concern needs to be balanced with the impacts of prohibition, noting the high number of people imprisoned for cannabis-related offences and saying, “that's something we don't want either”. Kennedy added that since nearly half of US states have legalised recreational cannabis, “We have the capacity to really study it ... and then we need to implement policies to address [the issue]”. Kennedy did not comment directly on the ongoing rescheduling of marijuana.