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The president cannot decriminalize marijuana. Only Congress can do that.

I believe the "criminality" is determined by it's scheduling under the Controlled Substances Act. The process of scheduling drugs involves, from start to finish, not one elected official.

That's an interesting point. I can't believe there is not a way around that though. Congress passed the Controlled Substance Act in the first place. They could modify it. They still add drugs for scheduling. Seems like they could take one away. I do not believe alcohol or tobacco are scheduled drugs. And I'm not sure about this but I think Congress has voted to actually reschedule drugs in the past as well, or maybe all they did was pass resolutions “authorizing” the DEA to look at a drug fro rescheduling like they did with Rohypnol. I don't know enough about the process but I think Congress could legalize marijuana if they wanted to, one way or another, subject to the President's veto power. Congress set up the schedules initially and delegated the power to add new drugs and reschedule those already scheduled. Seems like they could “undelegate” the power for one or more drugs. Personally, I don't think it should be a scheduled drug. I think we should just regulate it similar to the way we regulate alcohol.