President Joe Biden has tapped Anne Milgram, a former state attorney general and longtime criminal justice advocate, to head the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
In 2009, as the state attorney general of New Jersey, Milgram was quoted as saying that a plan there to legalize medical marijuana was “workable.”
But those comments came more than a decade ago, and it was unclear Tuesday what her current stance is on marijuana policy and reform.
“Like Anne Milgram’s prospective boss Attorney General (Merrick) Garland, it is tough to tell exactly what her stance on cannabis will be, but her focus on evidence-based policy is cause to be optimistic,” Morgan Fox, spokesman for the National Cannabis Industry Association, wrote in an email to Marijuana Business Daily.
“Ideally, Milgram would focus the DEA’s resources on non-cannabis issues and violence associated with the drug trade, and will facilitate the eventual transition of jurisdiction over cannabis to regulatory agencies that are not part of the law enforcement sphere.”