Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy fretted over the dangers of marijuana as his boss, President Trump, weighs reclassifying it as a less dangerous drug.
“I understand he’s [Donald Trump] getting pressure, listen, I’ve got nine kids, I see what these drugs do, I’m not a supporter of legalizing it,” Duffy told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Tuesday.
In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that insider sources who attended a fundraiser at Trump’s New Jersey golf club— which included guests such as the chief executive of Trulieve, one of the largest marijuana companies—said Trump was interested in reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug.
Marijuana is currently a Schedule I substance, meaning it is classified as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Reclassifying it as a Schedule III drug would not fully legalize the drug, but it would ease many of the current restrictions.
In 2022, then-President Joe Biden initiated the administrative process to review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. The following year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reclassify the drug. However, the process stalled after the DEA postponed a hearing scheduled for January 2025 on the rescheduling.
“With alcohol, I can look at Brian [Kilmeade], I can smell Brian if he’s been drinking in the car,” Duffy said, comparing the detection of THC—the psychoactive compound in cannabis—with alcohol detection for drivers. “With marijuana, we don’t have systems in place to tell if you were smoking marijuana before you got in the car,” he continued.
The transportation secretary and Fox & Friends hosts were discussing a study that found 40 percent of drivers in an Ohio county who died in collisions had THC detected in their systems. The study also found that this public health risk did not change after recreational cannabis was legalized.
A 2020 survey found that the estimated number of people who drove under the influence was about 37 percent lower for marijuana than for alcohol.
Following August reports of Trump’s plan to reclassify cannabis, the American Trucking Associations issued a letter to Duffy, stating it was “deeply concerned about the safety risks of rescheduling marijuana without explicit safeguards to preserve the necessary testing authority and technical requirements for DOT-regulated safety-sensitive workers.”
Studies have shown that THC can impair driving, but the active substance can remain in a person’s system long after the effects have worn off, making it harder to detect accurately and reliably. Researchers are still searching for a tool that can detect marijuana impairment as effectively as an alcohol breathalyzer.
“So the systems aren’t there at a time when culture’s pushing and celebrating the use of marijuana,” Duffy said on Tuesday.
As of 2025, medical marijuana is legal in 40 states, while recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states. In September, Trump shared a video on his social media promoting medical cannabis use for seniors, which caused cannabis stocks to soar.
A 2023 Gallup poll showed that marijuana legalization is one issue most Americans agree on, with 70% of U.S. adults in support.
