Can Donald Trump Make Weed Illegal Again

President Donald Trump's administration may be moving away from its war on marijuana.

In January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era memo that effectively protected states that had legalized marijuana from federal intervention. Since marijuana remains illegal at the federal level for any purpose, the Obama memo signaled to states that they could proceed with reforms without the abiding threat of the feds raiding country-legal businesses. Sessions's movement, however, revived the possibility of federal intervention, telling prosecutors that they could crack downwardly on marijuana even if it's legal under state police force.

On Friday, notwithstanding, Trump indicated that he's not interested in a new war on pot. According to Seung Min Kim at the Washington Mail, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), whose land was the first to allow recreational marijuana sales, said that Trump had told him Sessions's movement would not affect Colorado's marijuana manufacture — and in fact indicated that he would support a law to allow country legalization experiments to go on.

"Late Midweek, I received a delivery from the President that the Department of Justice's rescission of the Cole memo volition not touch Colorado'due south legal marijuana industry," Gardner said. "Furthermore, President Trump has assured me that he volition support a federalism-based legislative solution to fix this states' rights issue once and for all."

White Business firm officials confirmed Gardner'due south comments are accurate, the Post reported.

Gardner had previously threatened to cake Justice Department nominations until he got these kinds of assurances from the Trump assistants. With the White House's shift, he's now dropping the threat.

Nobody knows if Trump can be trusted

A large open question: Information technology's unclear how the Justice Department and the federal prosecutors information technology oversees will react to the deal. Since marijuana remains totally illegal nether federal law, prosecutors and other federal law enforcement officials could still pursue cases confronting marijuana shops and cultivators — although they'd now have to do it despite opposition from the White Business firm.

And then far, Justice Section officials have declined to comment — raising real questions nearly whether the Trump-Gardner deal will hold up in reality.

DOJ hasn't confirmed Trump/Gardner bargain to change stance on pot.

Before we say this is a existent affair:

Does deal involve DOJ, and if so, what did DOJ concur to? If the deal does non involve DOJ, what value does it accept? How tin Trump modify what DOJ does on enforcement actions?

— Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) April thirteen, 2018

It's not unusual for Trump to make promises that he doesn't or can't keep. For one, he said on the campaign trail that he would similar to leave marijuana legalization to the states — merely in one case he was in office, Sessions rescinded the Obama-era memo even though it did exactly what Trump promised.

This has led to some skeptical responses to the Trump-Gardner deal.

Afterward reports of the bargain, for instance, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson released a cautious statement: "I understand President Trump has offered his back up for states to take the correct to regulate marijuana and for legislation to enshrine this correct in law. I am cautiously optimistic that the president appears to have heard the will of the people on this issue. Merely this president has demonstrated a willingness to become back on his give-and-take. Until there is a formal agreement protecting Washington's well-regulated marijuana industry, I volition keep to stand set to defend information technology."

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) echoed the sentiment, tweeting, "Commitments mean little from President Trump. The simply way to truly protect states that have legalized marijuana is for Congress to act."

The war on marijuana ever risked a political backfire

If the Trump administration does ultimately back downward, the biggest reason may be that its anti-marijuana efforts were always politically risky.

For one, Sessions's policy allowed federal law enforcement to get against the volition of the voters. 8 of the 9 states that have legalized marijuana so far accept done so through ballot initiatives with voter support. The federal authorities would be effectively rejecting those votes past going later on legal pot in those states — and voters could take criminal offence to that.

More broadly, marijuana legalization is fairly popular at the national level. Gallup'southward latest survey in 2022 found that 64 per centum of U.s. adults back legalization, up from 36 percent more a decade before. Gallup fifty-fifty found that a bulk of Republicans at present support legalization. (Ane caveat: Anti-legalization advocates argue that if surveys offered options betwixt decriminalization, medical legalization, and recreational legalization, voters would exist much less likely to say that they dorsum total legalization.)

Gallup

Then a crackdown on legal marijuana stands in contrast to public opinion, including that of a majority of Republicans.

This kind of polling empowered a political backlash to the rescission of the Obama-era memo. Then Autonomous lawmakers like Booker and Firm Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pushed against the motion, merely Republican legislators like Gardner and Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) did too.

That backlash seems to have been enough to get Trump to commit, at to the lowest degree verbally, to allowing marijuana legalization to continue at the state level. The question is what happens next.

For more on marijuana legalization, read Vox's explainer.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/13/17236434/trump-marijuana-legalization-states

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