'War on Drugs' crusader Bill Bennett breaks with Trump as White House moves to ease federal marijuana rules

17 Feb 2026 By foxnews

Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett is siding with Trump on much of the administration's agenda, but drawing a firm line on marijuana policy - arguing the White House should not move to federally reschedule cannabis.

"I love Donald Trump," Bennett said during a phone call to Fox News Digital. "I love almost everything he does, but I don't love this."

Bennett spoke to Fox News Digital Friday in reaction to Trump signing an executive order in December 2025 directing the Justice Department to expedite moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule III essentially would treat marijuana more like a regulated medicine, but would not make cannabis legal nationwide.

"This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers, and future treatments," Trump said in the Oval Office of the executive order. "It's going to have a tremendously positive impact."

NY TIMES WALKS BACK STANCE ON MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION, ADMITS LOOSENING OF POLICIES HAS MADE COUNTRY WORSE OFF

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."

'HIGH JANUARY' FUELS CANNABIS BOOM AS EXPERTS FLAG SOME SERIOUS HEALTH DANGERS

He added that "you can concede the fact that marijuana can have some positive effects, and at the same time understand that it's, on the whole, a negative," arguing that cannabis can ease pain for some while being "massively destructive of attention and focus among young people."

Bennett said the prevalence of marijuana use among young adults has compounded dropout rates and absenteeism in schools in recent years.

In the post-pandemic education landscape, U.S. schools continue to battle absenteeism, with the nationwide rate of students missing 10% or more of schooling sitting at about 28% in the 2022-2023 school year, which is a decrease from the pandemic high of 31% in the 2021-2022, according to Department of Education data.

CATHOLICVOTE LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN URGING TRUMP TO REJECT MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PLANS

"If you combine the dropout rate, the fact that attendance is down at schools and the use of marijuana among young people … it's just another bad thing to happen to children," Bennett told Fox News Digital.

When asked about the pushback to the effort to reschedule, White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fox News Digital that it's part of the president's "pledge to expand medical research into applications of marijuana and cannabidiols by rescheduling marijuana."

"The President's historic action paved the way for the development of promising new treatments for American patients, especially veterans - and the presence of several leaders from law enforcement and veterans groups at the Oval Office signing is indicative of how President Trump continues to push the envelope to support our nation's heroes," Desai said.

The culture surrounding marijuana has changed in recent years, in part due to marijuana lobbyists and the fast-growing cannabis helping launch pot into the "mainstream," according to Bennett, pushing public opinion from narrow support for medical use into a broader culture that treats the drug as "generally okay."

Fox News Digital also spoke with Elayne Bennett, the former education secretary's wife, who is the founder and president of a nonprofit focused on promoting "self-respect through self-control" for school students, called the Best Friends Foundation.

MIKE TYSON PRAISES TRUMP FOR CANNABIS EXECUTIVE ORDER, PREDICTS IT WILL ALLOW 500,000 JOBS TO BE COUNTED

Elayne Bennett works directly within schools, including in Washington, D.C., and said that the culture has shifted to the point that students are unaware of the effects marijuana and other drugs have.

She pointed to an interview that the Best Friends Foundation held with one of its students, a 14-year-old boy who relayed he was never told habitual marijuana use before the age of 18 can shave off eight IQ points from a person as an adult, as research has found.

"That just hit me like a ton of bricks," she said. "I mean, are you kidding me? That's insane. Nobody is saying, 'Hey, stop it, don't.'"

Elayne Bennett worked with former first lady Nancy Reagan to promote abstinence from drugs, and called on the Trump administration to "Reinvigorate the 'just say no'" campaign famous in the 1980s and '90s.

"Nancy Reagan, just say no. Reinvigorate that drugs hurt you. Drugs kill," she said.

The former secretary of education noted that Trump himself is a teetotaler of drugs and alcohol, while advocating he apply that mentality more broadly.

"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.