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Trump administration's move vs. recreational marijuana creates new tensions over issue

January 06, 2018 02:26·
Trump kills Obama-era protections for state recreational weed sales

Trump kills Obama-era protections for state recreational weed sales

California's days-old recreational use marijuana industry is facing an uncertain future, following the Trump administration's decision to rescind an Obama-era leniency policy that kept federal authorities from cracking down on the pot trade in states in which the drug is legal.

The state banned "loco-weed" in 1913, according to a history by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the pot advocacy group known as NORML.

"Everybody is super anxious".

"Cannabis is now legal in the most populous state in the country", New Frontier Data, which tracks the cannabis industry, wrote in its 2017 annual report, "dramatically increasing the total potential size of the industry while establishing legal adult use markets across the entire US Pacific Coast given the legalized states of Washington and OR". "They are all, 'What does this mean?".

Allen would only sell to pot brokers and dispensaries who had paperwork proving they were legal, but he says it was easy for companies to pass off as legitimate in California's gray market, a loosely regulated underground economy.

That sort of casual looking the other way by cannabis small business owners came to an end on January 1, when California became the sixth state to roll out recreational marijuana sales.

And in case you're wondering about the size of the industry as a whole, Arcview Market Research claims the entire North American marijuana industry made about $6.7 billion in 2016. It took eight months in 2017 for Colorado to surpass the billion dollar sales milestone. "States' rights is an argument they trot out when it's convenient".

When Hezekiah Allen grew medical marijuana for California's loosely regulated market in Humboldt County, the general rule of thumb: willful ignorance. In San Diego, US Attorney Adam Braverman said his prosecutors "will evaluate violations of (federal drug laws) in accordance with our district's federal law enforcement priorities". Officers destroyed a record 30,000 plants a year ago, surpassing the previous record of 8,800 plants destroyed in 2016.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said his state's pot laws keep criminals out of the market, and stop the drug reaching children or crossing borders to neighboring states. Prosecutors there have always focused on marijuana crimes that "create the greatest safety threats" and will continue to be guided by that, he said.

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Yesterday, the Attorney General rescinded the Cole Memo on marijuana prosecutions and directed that federal marijuana prosecution decisions be governed by the same principles that govern all federal prosecution decisions.

Before the Obama administration put the policy in place, the feds sent shivers through the medical marijuana community by threatening landlords and operators with property seizure notices, resulting in many shops shutting down in cities where they were considered a nuisance. It remains illegal to sell the drug until the proposed regulations are finalized and licenses granted to businesses that hope to grow or open retail stores like those in Colorado and other states. Sessions, appointed a year ago by President Donald Trump, has been a vocal critic of marijuana.

In Los Angeles, many marijuana businesses have been eagerly awaiting local approval so they can obtain state licenses and start selling recreational pot. "Our agency intends to follow state laws so that people with debilitating medical conditions can continue to access the medicine they need".

A key goal of the new regime is to eliminate California's illicit marijuana production and farms, which account for roughly 60 percent of the nation's pot supply and are blamed for degrading the environment.

Recreational marijuana will be legal to purchase in Nevada starting July 1.

For many stakeholders in the marijuana industry, Thursday was a hard day. "I don't see the people who are behind this, people like myself, rolling over for the Justice Department".

"We will not be bullied by an out-of-town and out-of-touch politician", Wesson said. How legalized marijuana is changing one California town.

He predicts there would be an "uproar" if the federal government moved against what states have done. "Six months from now if US attorneys have not taken Jeff Sessions up on this insane offer, then I think that it absolutely makes no difference to anybody".

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