In his temporary budget-dealing with Democrats, President Trump has agreed to continue a ban on using federal funds to interfere in states’ legal cannabis practices, but as 2018 nears, a government stance is largely still up in the air.
Earlier this month, the president and congressional Democratic leaders reached a budget agreement to approve hurricane relief, federal spending, and raising the debt ceiling through the end of the year. The agreement included a Rohrabacher-Blumenauer clause (a.k.a. Rohrabacher-Farr), which will effectively serve to protect state medical marijuana programsfrom intrusion by federal authorities until Dec. 8, 2017.
The clause stipulates that the U.S. Department of Justice may not use any of its funds to prevent states, the District of Columbia, or Puerto Rico from “implementing a law that authorizes the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.” The language of the clause has appeared in proposed legislation since 2003, and finally became law in 2014–joining the ‘Cole Memo’ as one of two landmark federal texts concerning cannabis.
The legislation has increasingly found bipartisan support in the past few years (including this one), and been renewed multiple times. In recent months, though, its iterations have also encountered some last-minute sticking points.
In late spring, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to leaders in congress asking them to forgo such federal protections for cannabis, which states and their operators are already afforded. In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee nevertheless approved its version of the new amendment, and in August, a U.S. District Court upheld interpretation of Rohrabacher-Farr that protects states’ legally compliant ‘good actors’ for the second time.
Earlier this month, however, a committee from the Republican-held House instead chose to rejectits version of the amendment for inclusion in a federal budget. And less than a week later, the president agreed to the clause’s inclusion in a short-term federal budget he’d collaborated on with Democrats–a move that reportedly gave some conservatives pause.
Capitol Police remove a pro-cannabis activist who lit up during a rally on Capitol Hill on April 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
As Slate explained in April, the clause was designed in response to the potentially quite hazardous grey areas that exist for operators between federal and state positions on cannabis.
While many cannabis users (especially white, affluent ones) haven’t felt much federal pressure over the drug’s Schedule I status, those groups who have helped pioneer legal cannabis as producers and retailers have often faced heavy crackdowns, and short-term losses into the millions. Overall, more than 8.2 million Americans were also arrested for marijuana crimes between 2001 and 2010 alone, Slate points out.
Extending the clause’s effects through December 8 could therefore offset some big burdens for cannabis operators who’re trying in good faith to build businesses that comply with state laws–at least for a few more months. Despite this development, however, many aspects of federal and state game-plans for the cannabis industry remain uncertain, forcing a range of cannapreneurs to proceed unprotected while hoping for the best.
As Sessions has continued voicing his disapproval of the plant, numerous states have also found themselves struggling over the onset of an industry that a majority of Americans have repeatedly said they support. In Michigan, for example, medical cannabis dispensary owners and patients have been waiting to see whether the state will force shops to close this year as it prepares its regulatory framework.
As Michigan’s WZZM 13 reported, the push has come from state licensing board chairman Rick Johnson, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, and board member Don Bailey, a retired Michigan State Police officer, who have suggested that dispensaries be shut down until the board begins issuing licenses next year. As of September 12, the board has decided to give medical cannabis businesses until December 15 to close down or potentially risk not obtaining a license under the state’s new regulatory system, which will also allow dispensaries to apply for licenses starting Dec. 15.
The state’s new system will be “aimed at increasing oversight and imposing new taxes on the industry,” according to Leafly. In the mean time, the Michigan licensing board’s decision may force registered cannabis patients to grow their own cannabis or, as permitted under current state law, acquire it from caregivers.
According to WZZM, “The move could leave hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries across the state shuttered and thousands of patients with no place to get the pot they use to help with a variety of ailments.”
Of course, Michigan is not the only state that’s finding the transition from grey market to green industry to be a challenge.
Across the country, numerous states are working to design and implement licensing programs as quickly as possible, but as carefully as they can, too. That includes experimenting with how licenses will be issued, to whom, and whether industry actors will be forced to shut down as state regulatory agencies get up and running. As long as federal banking laws and practices mostly continue to keep financial institutions well away from cannabis, operators must also still come up with ways to protect their revenues and product (literally) while attempting to honor complicated rules for operation and taxation.
Faced with this whopping task, many states have also sought additional guidance on how to handle the medicinal and recreational plant from the federal government, other states, and wherever else they can get it. As of August, however, the Justice Department has reportedly moved to end its research on the cannabis front going forward, even as consumers, industry, medicine, and all levels of government increasingly clamor for scientific data.
Last month, The Cannabist reported that Sessions’ Justice Department has “effectively blocked” the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from processing more than two dozen requests to grow cannabis for research purposes. U.S. officials familiar with the matter confirmed that the issue of cannabis regulation and research is “one of a number in which the anti-drug agency is at odds with the Trump administration,” the Cannabist summarized.
Last year, the DEA began accepting applications to grow more cannabis for research, and it’s reportedly received 25 such proposals as of this month. In order to proceed, however, researchers would need the Justice Department’s approval, and have so far come up entirely short, according to the Cannabist.
DEA spokesman Rusty Payne commented to the site that the agency “has always been in favor of enhanced research for controlled substances such as marijuana.”
A Cookie Monster plush toy sits attached to the front of a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HUMVEE) used by the Kentucky State Police Cannabis Suppression Branch in Barboursville, Kentucky, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2015. (Credit: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
All things considered, the federal government’s recent behaviors surrounding cannabis have made the U.S. weed landscape fairly difficult for businesses and researchers to navigate. That, combined with states’ own struggles, has meant that cannabis producers, purveyors, and patients across the country have been facing similar kinds of risks to their daily lives–ones that could perhaps be resolved through listening and cooperation by lawmakers, according to industry experts.
Jolene Forman, Staff Attorney for the longstanding nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, commented by phone that government can help to avoid growing pains for the legal cannabis industry by paying attention to the work that’s been done so far. This includes taking a leaf out of the books of states, cities, and municipalities that have already been tackling the transition from black market to grey market to wholly above-board.
“When states move toward more strict regulation, they face the challenge of bringing in and keeping good operators,” Forman said. “Colorado has already made this transition successfully, and Oregon and California–which has had medical marijuana laws for 21 years, the longest of any state–are currently in the middle of a similar process.”
“As states work to establish strict regulation and control, they have to overcome the hurdle of incorporating operators that have strived to maintain really high operating standards, and to provide high quality products to patients,” Forman said. “It’s important to keep these entities in the marijuana market because they have been providing marijuana for patients and have developed important knowledge and expertise. At the same time, it’s important for a state to strictly regulate and control the marijuana market.”
“We have to try to work with them so they can function during this process,and it’s important to take markets that are not well-organized at the state level and incorporate them with a state model while making sure good actors aren’t falling through the cracks,” Forman continued. “With regard to medical marijuana, we also want to make sure that patients don’t lose access to their medication. If home cultivation is possible to offset this, great, but it’s not always feasible.”
In the meantime, Forman says protections like the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment and its descendants are “critically important” to ensuring the cannabis industry can proceed toward sustainable, safe regulatory standards.
“This is especially true right now, soon after President Trump nominated several new U.S. Attorneys and it’s unclear what their positions will be on state marijuana laws,” Forman noted. “This amendment provides Congress with a clear way to protect patients, state medical marijuana programs, and medical marijuana providers from federal interference, and recent cases out of the Ninth Circuit make clear that [Rohrabacher-Farr] protects medical marijuana operators in a meaningful way.”
Forman also commented that a “vast majority” of Americans have indicated their support for legalized cannabis, at least for medical purposes, and for states’ rights to manage it. She pointed to a February 2017 Quinnipiac poll which found that 71% of Americans, including 55% of Republicans, “oppose the government enforcing federal laws against marijuana in states that have already legalized medical or recreational marijuana.”
For federal legislators considering their stance on cannabis, data on states’ performance so far is perhaps even more compelling.
“State marijuana laws are working,” Forman said. “By replacing failed punitive approaches with public health-based marijuana policies, legal marijuana states have benefitted from dramatic decreases in arrests and convictions, as well as significant increases in tax revenues.” During the same period, she noted, youth marijuana use and traffic fatalities rates have remained stable, too.
“States are working to responsibly regulate marijuana and have asked the federal government to let them do just that. If the federal government chooses to change course and interfere with state programs, it will undermine states’ ability to regulate and control marijuana, [and] be contrary to state and federal interests,” Forman continued. “If instead the federal government recognized that state level legalization is aimed at improving public health and safety, they could work with states to advance both measures.”
Hoping that other people will achieve certain insights is typically a study in prolonged patience, of course, and especially if said folks are in federal government. But if they’re provided with a steady, respectful flow of hard data on the matter–and perhaps a pinch of the right inspiration–then such revelations just might happen.
Which in this case, presumably, would make for some very merry patients and entrepreneurs.
credit:420intel.com
