The grandson of Jimmy Carter eulogized the late president on Thursday, paying tribute to his “prophetic” early advocacy for policies like marijuana decriminalization.
At the former president’s funeral service at the National Cathedral, Jason Carter joked that his grandfather was “the first millennial” given his support for various progressive issues that are now enjoy broad support.
“As governor of Georgia, half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration,” he said, adding that Carter’s “political life and his presidency, for me, was not just ahead of its time—it was prophetic.”
“He had the courage and strength to stick to his principles, even when they were politically unpopular,” the younger Carter, a former Georgia senator, said. “Fifty years ago, he was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources—and, by the way, he cut the deficit, wanted to decriminalize marijuana, deregulated so many industries that he gave us cheap flights and, as you heard, craft beer.”
During Carter’s first year as president, he made history by asserting broadly that “penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
“I support a change in law to end federal criminal penalties for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana, leaving the states free to adopt whatever laws they wish concerning marijuana,” Carter said.
The then-president’s head of the now-defunct White House Office of Drug Abuse Policy, Peter Bourne, said in 1977 that the administration “will continue to discourage marijuana use, but we feel criminal penalties that brand otherwise law‐abiding people for life are neither an effective nor an appropriate deterrent.”
The Carter administration also directly reached out to a nonprofit that was overseeing Minnesota’s then-novel marijuana decriminalization law, voicing support for the policy change. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office also granted an award recognizing the program.
In 2011, Carter also penned an op-ed for The New York Times, wherein he called for an end to the war on drugs altogether, calling the policy a “total failure” and “futile.”
“This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin,” he said. “One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.”
He also said in 2012 that he was “in favor” of state efforts to legalize and regulate cannabis. He told a CNN interviewer at the time that “we can watch and see what happens in the state of Washington for instance, around Seattle, and let the American government and let the American people see does it cause a serious problem or not.”
But in 2013, he reversed that position, saying he opposed legalization.
“I do not favor legalization. We must do everything we can to discourage marijuana use, as we do now with tobacco and excessive drinking,” Carter said, according to the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches To Marijuana. “We have to prevent making marijuana smoking from becoming attractive to young people, which is, I’m sure, what the producers of marijuana…are going to try and do.”
“I hope that Colorado and Washington, as you authorize the use of marijuana, will set up very strict experiments to ascertain how we can avoid the use of marijuana,” he added. “There should be no advertising for marijuana in any circumstances and no driving under the influence. We need to avoid the use of marijuana, particularly among young people.”
In 2020, Carter was featured in a documentary where he discussed the time his son smoked marijuana at the White House with musician Willie Nelson during his administration.
“When Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked pot in the White House and he says that his companion was one of the servants of the White House,” Carter said. “It actually was one of my sons.”
Also, under his administration, the Compassionate Investigational New Drug was established, providing select patients suffering from certain conditions with access to marijuana joints produced with federal authorization.
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
The grandson of Jimmy Carter eulogized the late president on Thursday, paying tribute to his “prophetic” early advocacy for policies like marijuana decriminalization. At the former president’s funeral service at the National Cathedral, Jason Carter joked that his grandfather was “the first millennial” given his support for various progressive issues that are now enjoy broad Read More
