On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) joined the Pod Save America podcast and revealed who her “dream blunt rotation” would be when asked. It was hypothetical, as she doesn’t smoke, and the senator kept things positive in her responses.

In what they called a special President’s Day edition episode Feb. 19, Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau (the former Barack Obama staffer, not the MCU actor) asked her about her push to deschedule pot, and also who she’s most and least likely to invite to a blunt rotation out of a list of pre-selected choices. 

The list of choices for the “dream blunt rotation” included politicians like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), as well as celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Taylor Swift.

Warren played along, not keeping things too serious, revealing that she could only pick one person for her dream rotation. “I’m just doing The Rock four times,” she said, laughing.

When Favreau asked about her “nightmare blunt rotation,” she was given the choices of her perceived opponents: Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and Mark Zuckerberg. 

Warren declined to answer, keeping things classy.   

“I’m starting to feel a little sick,” she laughed. “That is really awful to contemplate.”

Earlier in the conversation, Favreau also asked her about a more serious topic—her recent push to deschedule cannabis, joining several other lawmakers. 

“You and other Democratic senators recently asked the Biden administration to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act—entirely—which would decriminalize it on a federal level. Have you heard back from DOJ or the DEA, or had any conversations with the administration about this?

“DEA?” She asked. “We’re pushing on them now. I want them to deschedule marijuana altogether. Look, if the Republicans didn’t block us, we’d run this through Congress. You just legalize it.

“There still could be regulations around it like there is around alcohol—you’ve got to be a certain age, you got to have certain disclosures about the potency and so on, I’m all for that,” Warren said. “But I really want to say to the DEA: Guys, come on. It is not 1958, and we don’t need to be terrified of this stuff. Let’s just deschedule it and go forward.” 

Pod Save America is hosted by former Obama aides Favreau, along with Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Push to Deschedule

During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Warren discussed the push to deschedule cannabis fully rather than moving it from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.

“Right now marijuana is scheduled, it’s called, as a drug by the DEA at the same risk as heroin,” Warren said. “And that means not only is it illegal, you can’t even do research on it. It’s, so no—and what we’re saying in this letter is, ‘Guys get with it,’ at the DEA. It’s not 1954. More than half of all states have legalized marijuana.”

In a letter led by Warren and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), along with nine other Democrats including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) among others. 

The letter urges the DEA and Biden administration to deschedule cannabis altogether, recognizing that rescheduling to Schedule III would be a “significant step forward” but would not resolve the “worst harms of the current system.”

“Thus, the DEA should deschedule marijuana altogether. Marijuana’s placement in the CSA has had a devastating impact on our communities and is increasingly out of step with state law and public opinion,” the legislators said in the letter dated Jan. 30.

Warren routinely calls for a just and equitable cannabis industry. But the biggest change possible would be removing cannabis entirely from the list of controlled substances.

Biden could use a boost this upcoming general election, given what’s at stake. A January survey, conducted by Lake Research Partners, revealed a number of key findings surrounding registered voters and attitudes surrounding cannabis, namely that Biden could boost his favorability by 11% among younger voters should cannabis move from Schedule I to Schedule III.

The survey demonstrated the support behind rescheduling cannabis, with 58% of participants showing support and 19% opposed. Researchers wrote that support also crossed most demographic lines, and no more than one-third of voters in any major subgroup was opposed to rescheduling. Young voters, those aged 18-25, showed the strongest levels of support for rescheduling at 65%, with nearly half indicating they felt strongly about the issue. Support was strong across age demographics, with seniors showing support by a double-digit margin.

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In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday, Janet Yellen recounted eating at a restaurant chain in Beijing called Yi Zuo Yi Wang, a meal that had Chinese social media abuzz last month.

A post on Weibo, the popular Chinese blog platform, detailed what Yellen’s party ordered that day, including “jian shou qing, an unusual yet highly sought-after mushroom prized for its unique properties,” according to CNN.

Those properties can include hallucinations –– unless the mushrooms are cooked and prepared a certain way, which was the case when Yellen dined there.

“So I went with this large group of people and the person who had arranged our dinner did the ordering,” Yellen told Burnett, as quoted by HuffPost. “There was this delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties.”

Yellen said that she “learned that later.”

“I read that if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact,” Yellen added. “But all of us enjoyed the mushrooms, the restaurant, and none of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them.”

The dish has been selling out in Beijing following Yellen’s diplomatic visit there last month.

Jokes aside, we are probably getting closer to the day when a cabinet official actually does talk about a hallucinogenic experience. 

A growing number of politicians and policymakers have expressed a receptivity to changing laws surrounding psychedelics, particularly for therapeutic treatment.

Last month, President Joe Biden’s younger brother, Frank Biden, said that the president is open to psychedelic treatment options.

“He is very open-minded,” Frank Biden said. 

“Put it that way. I don’t want to speak; I’m talking brother-to-brother. Brother-to-brother,” he added. “The question is, is the world, is the U.S. ready for this? My opinion is that we are on the cusp of a consciousness that needs to be brought about to solve a lot of the problems in and around addiction, but as importantly, to make us aware of the fact that we’re all one people and we’ve got to come together.”

But President Biden has also been reluctant to embrace outright cannabis legalization, which has concerned some of his fellow Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez said last month that she is concerned Biden’s position on marijuana could undermine her bipartisan effort to expand research into psychedelics.

“I believe the president has displayed a regressiveness for cannabis policy,” she said. “And if there’s a regressiveness toward cannabis policy, it’s likely to be worse on anything else.”

Despite that “regressiveness,” Biden took some of the strongest steps toward cannabis reform of any president in history last fall when he issued pardons for federal cannabis offenses.

“As I often said during my campaign for President, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana. Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates,” Biden said in the announcement at the time.

In addition to the pardons, Biden said he was also “asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.”

“Federal law currently classifies marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances.  This is the same schedule as for heroin and LSD, and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine – the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic,” Biden said.

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