“我喜欢唐纳德·特朗普，”贝内特在接受福克斯新闻数字频道电话采访时表示，“我几乎喜欢他做的所有事，但这件事除外。”
贝内特周五接受福克斯新闻数字频道采访时，回应了特朗普2025年12月签署的一项行政命令，该命令指示司法部加快将大麻根据《受控物质法案》从第一类药物重新归类为第三类药物。第三类药物本质上会将大麻更像受监管的药物对待，但不会使大麻在全国范围内合法化。
“这项重新分类命令将使与大麻相关的医学研究更容易开展，使我们能够研究其益处、潜在危险以及未来的治疗方法，”特朗普在椭圆形办公室就该行政命令发表讲话时表示，“这将产生巨大的积极影响。”
[《纽约时报》收回对大麻合法化的立场，承认政策放宽使国家状况恶化]
前里根教育部长威廉·贝内特在政府大部分议程上支持总统唐纳德·特朗普，但在大麻政策上态度坚决。（斯蒂芬妮·凯肯达尔/盖蒂图片社）
贝内特曾于1985年至1988年担任里根总统的教育部长，此前在里根执政初期领导国家人文基金会。
后来，他在老布什政府时期成为国家药物管制政策办公室（通常被称为“国家禁毒总监”）的首任主任，在任期间倡导“禁毒战争”，包括推动政府强调药物预防和执行反药物使用法律的国家药物管制战略。
他告诉福克斯新闻数字频道，他支持特朗普的大部分政策，但不能支持重新安排大麻分类，理由是大麻对学生的影响以及作为成瘾和犯罪的“入门药物”。
这位前里根政府官员向福克斯新闻数字频道表示，年轻人使用大麻的情况几乎未受到限制，因为当前文化宣传并接受大麻使用，损害了青少年健康。
“大麻会分散注意力和专注力，如果你要上学，显然需要这些能力，”他说，“所以大麻会干扰这些能力，抑制这些能力。它也是一种入门药物，会导致使用其他药物。几乎任何使用所谓‘比大麻更危险’药物的人，都是通过大麻这个‘门户’进入的。”
[‘大麻一月’推动大麻热潮，专家警告存在严重健康风险]
里根总统（中）宣布选择劳罗·F·卡瓦佐斯（右）接替威廉·J·贝内特（左）担任教育部长。（德克·哈尔斯特德/盖蒂图片社）
他补充说，“你可以承认大麻可能有一些积极影响，但同时要明白，总体上它是负面的”，认为大麻可以缓解部分人的疼痛，同时“严重破坏年轻人的注意力和专注力”。
贝内特表示，近年来年轻人大麻使用的普遍性加剧了学校辍学率和缺勤率。
根据教育部数据，在疫情后的教育环境中，美国学校仍在与缺勤问题作斗争。2022-2023学年，全国学生缺课10%或更多的比例约为28%，低于2021-2022学年疫情高峰期的31%。
[天主教选民组织发起运动，敦促特朗普拒绝大麻重新分类计划]
“如果你把辍学率、学校出勤率下降以及年轻人使用大麻的情况结合起来……这只是对儿童的又一个坏消息，”贝内特告诉福克斯新闻数字频道。
当被问及对重新分类努力的反对声音时，白宫发言人库什·德赛告诉福克斯新闻数字频道，这是总统“通过重新分类大麻来扩大大麻和大麻素应用的医学研究”承诺的一部分。
“总统的历史性行动为美国患者（尤其是退伍军人）开发有希望的新疗法铺平了道路——椭圆形办公室签署仪式上有多名执法和退伍军人团体领导人出席，这表明特朗普总统如何继续推动界限，支持我们国家的英雄，”德赛说。
贝内特表示，近年来围绕大麻的文化发生了变化，部分原因是大麻游说者和快速增长的大麻产业将大麻推向“主流”，推动公众舆论从对医用大麻的有限支持转变为将其视为“总体上可接受”的更广泛文化。
福克斯新闻数字频道还采访了前教育部长的妻子伊莱恩·贝内特，她是一个旨在通过“自我控制培养自尊”的非营利组织“最佳朋友基金会”的创始人和主席。
[迈克·泰森赞扬特朗普的大麻行政命令，预测将创造50万个就业岗位]
伊莱恩·贝内特直接在包括华盛顿特区在内的学校工作，她说文化已经转变到学生不知道大麻和其他药物影响的程度。
她指出，最佳朋友基金会采访了一名14岁学生，该学生转述称，在18岁之前习惯性使用大麻会导致成年后智商降低8分（研究已证实），而他此前从未被告知这一点。
“这让我震惊不已，”她说，“你在开玩笑吗？这太疯狂了。没人说‘嘿，别这样，别用’。”
伊莱恩·贝内特曾与前第一夫人南希·里根合作推广药物 Abstinence，呼吁特朗普政府“重新启动20世纪80年代和90年代著名的‘坚决说不’运动”。
“南希·里根，坚决说不。重新启动这个运动，毒品会伤害你，毒品会致死，”她说。
里根总统与身旁的妻子南希在内阁成员面前发表讲话，包括唐纳德·T·里根、威廉·J·贝内特、理查德·E·林、伊丽莎白·多尔、约翰·S·赫林顿、小塞缪尔·R·皮尔斯、威廉·E·西蒙、唐纳德·P·霍德尔、马尔科姆·鲍德里奇和乔治·P·舒尔茨。（辛西娅·约翰逊/盖蒂图片社）
这位前教育部长指出，特朗普本人不使用毒品和酒精，同时倡导将这种心态更广泛地应用。
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“美国一直是一个自我纠正的社会。我们做了很多愚蠢和糟糕的事情，但我们会纠正，这次也一样，”他说。
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]
Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett is siding with President Donald Trump on much of the administration’s agenda, but drawing a firm line on marijuana policy.(Stephanie Kuykendal/Getty Images)
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]
President Ronald with Reagan, center, announcing choice of Lauro F. Cavazos, right, to replace William J. Bennett, left, as secretary of education.(Dirck Halstead/Getty Images)
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.
President Ronald W. Reagan with wife Nancy beside him, speaking in front of Cabinet Members, including Donald T. Regan, William J. Bennett, Richard E. Lyng, Elizabeth Dole, John S. Herrington, Samuel R. Pierce Jr., William E. Simon, Donald P. Hodel, Malcolm Baldrige and George P. Shultz.(Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images)
The former secretary of education noted that Trump himself is a teetotaler of drugs and alcohol, while advocating he apply that mentality more broadly.
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“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.
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