07/02/2025
Iron Mike standing up for the cannabis cause! Thank you good sir. God Bless you!
Mike Tyson Tells Trump To Reschedule Ma*****na And Free Prisoners In Fox News Appearance
By Kyle Jaeger for Ma*****na Moment
Retired boxer Mike Tyson has delivered his message to reschedule, and ultimately legalize, ma*****na to President Donald Trump on one of his most-watched TV networks: Fox News.
Days after leading a letter alongside other professional athletes and celebrities promoting cannabis reform that was sent to Trump on Friday, Tyson joined FOX & Friends on Monday where he made made the case for rescheduling ma*****na, expanding clemency and allowing licensed cannabis businesses to access the banking system.
“Cannabis is in the same category as he**in. How do you categorize it with he**in?” he said. “Anybody that ever smoked cannabis knows there’s no comparison and that it’s just ridiculous.”
Tyson reiterated his support for moving ma*****na from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)—a reform that was initiated under the Biden administration but has since stalled at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). And he also stressed the economic opportunity of changing federal ma*****na laws for state-licensed businesses.
“There’s over 500,000 people that can’t get loans in the cannabis business alone, and that’s just so ridiculous,” Tyson, who owns the ma*****na company Tyson 2.0, said. “It’s such a great income for the country. And I just can’t see it. It’s ridiculous.”
He added that advocates are “also working on clemency, because there’s people that still in prison—been in there for 15 years, got enormous amount of time and ridiculous sentences—for cannabis.”
Tyson also argued that “the first mistake that we’re making is categorizing [ma*****na] as a drug. It’s not a drug. It’s a medicine.” And he said his personal experience with cannabis is a testament to that, pointing out that he was “going crazy” as a young adult before he started consuming ma*****na for its therapeutic benefits.
Asked whether he feels the plant should be fully legalized nationwide, Tyson said “100 percent yes,” in large part because “the time and the sentences” that people criminalized over cannabis have received are “just totally ridiculous.”
The boxer cited the criminal justice reform advocate and former federal cannabis prisoner Weldon Angelos as an example. Angelos helped organize the letter to Trump, who pardoned him over a cannabis-related offense during his first term.
Tyson, along with Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba, also recently toured a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lab. And during his Fox News interview, he echoed points from that tour, asserting that illicit operators from China and Mexico are “filling our cannabis with fentanyl and pesticides and all that stuff, and it’s just killing human beings.”
Throughout the talk, Tyson stressed that he feels “cannabis is not a drug.”
“No one’s ever [overdosed from cannabis,” he said. People drink. How many people die drinking? You put a bunch of people that don’t like each other in the room and give them alcohol and they kill each other. You give them some cannabis and they start taking selfies or whatever.”
The interview comes about a week after Trump’s first pick for attorney general in the current administration, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), reiterated his own support for rescheduling cannabis—suggesting in an interview with a Florida Republican lawmaker that the GOP could win more of the youth vote by embracing ma*****na reform.
On ma*****na rescheduling, the president did endorse the policy change on the campaign trail. But he’s been publicly silent on the issue since taking office. Gaetz said last month that Trump’s endorsement of a Schedule III reclassification was essentially an attempt to shore up support among young voters rather than a sincere reflection of his personal views about cannabis.
A survey conducted by a GOP pollster affiliated with Trump that was released in April found that a majority of Republicans back a variety of cannabis reforms, including rescheduling. And, notably, they’re even more supportive of allowing states to legalize ma*****na without federal interference compared to the average voter.
