How Will Trump Treat Marijuana?
Trump’s stances have been vague but with his nominations, we can see how the incoming administration will treat marijuana
Donald Trump is, politically, fascinating. Much of his campaign rhetoric focused on “Making America Great Again” without offering many specifics on how exactly he would propose to do that. His stances are often wildly inconsistent and contradictory.
It’s important to elucidate the uncertainty which Trump’s ascension to power brings to so many facets of American life, and how little we know about what kind of policy platform he will adopt. Perhaps the most interesting legal contradiction Trump faces rests in the states with legislation passed regarding medicinal and recreational marijuana. Republicans have, historically, preferred to allow states to govern themselves wherever possible, eschewing federal regulations.
This gets interesting with 29 states and the District of Columbia having currently passed laws allowing for some form of medicinal or recreational consumption of marijuana, directly contradicting federal law. These laws were made possible by the Cole Memorandum in 2013 and the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment in 2014, as well as Loretta Lynch and then Eric Holder effectively “looking the other way” while states conducted their experiment with cannabis, removing federal enforcement from states with state-level legislation. Eric Holder is no longer Attorney General, and Trump gets to pick his replacement. All he would need to do is rip up the Cole Memorandum and wait for the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment to expire with the current spending bill on April 25th, 2017, and the incoming Attorney General could eviscerate the marijuana industry with the full force of his legal office.
Trump has several options on how to proceed, and his nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General to succeed Eric Holder may offer insight. Sessions has a long-held hostile view of marijuana. Sessions has publicly stated that, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He’s also said, “…we need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized… That it is, in fact, a very real danger.” During his confirmation hearing, Sessions stated that “…it is not the Attorney General’s job to decide what laws to enforce.” Taken together, it is very reasonable to believe that Sessions would not be opposed to enforcing federal law regarding marijuana, overriding state legislation.
There is reason to believe, however, that Trump and Sessions may not enforce the law differently than it has been since 2014. If Trump and Sessions choose to reverse the national course on marijuana, they would risk the ire of the residents and governments of battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, all of which passed marijuana initiatives this last November. Pew Research finds 57% of US adults believe recreational marijuana should be legal, while 89% support medical marijuana nationally. These figures indicate widespread support nationally, and a fundamental shift from views held even 15 years ago. States with new marijuana laws are enjoying the influx of tax revenue, and have reported minimal negative side effects.
It would be shocking for Trump to completely dismantle such a popular $6.7 billion industry, but it would be perfectly legal and simple for him to do so, given marijuana’s current tenuous legal position. Is Trump willing to undertake such an unpopular position? Given his thirst for approval, the smart money is on “no”, even if Sessions and Trump don’t personally approve of the drug.
