White House to Crack Down on Legal Cannabis States

“There are two distinct issues here,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said. “Medical marijuana and recreational marijuana.” During today’s press conference, Spicer was asked about cannabis legalization and how the new administration planned to address states that have legalized it, both medically and recreationally. Spicer responded by saying that the president understands that medical cannabis can provide an important “comfort” that can be helpful to very sick or terminal patients.

Although the phrasing of his commentary is ill-informed and dismissive of cannabis as being medicinal and instead thinks of it as a comfort for people in pain, he cites the federal ruling specifically, as a law that we need to abide by.

“There’s a big difference between that and recreational marijuana. I think that when you see the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people. There is still a federal law we need to abide by in terms of when it comes to recreational marijuana.”

It would seem that through what Spicer has said and has not said, that we can assume that the administration will not target medical states or laws, but that they might go after recreational states for going against the federal ruling on cannabis. “I do believe that you’ll see greater enforcement,” Spicer said, while adding the exact policy is “a question for the Department of Justice.”

Tom Angell, Chairman of the Marijuana Majority, mentioned how unwise it would be for President Donald Trump to break away from his pledges to leave cannabis policies and regulation up to the states. “If the administration is looking for ways to become less popular, cracking down on voter-approved marijuana laws would be a great way to do it,” Angell said. “With a clear and growing majority of the country now supporting legalization, reneging on his promises would be a political disaster and huge distraction from the rest of the president’s agenda.”

Mason Tvert of the Marijuana Policy Project agrees with Angell’s assessment. “People do not want federal prohibition laws to be enforced in states that have rejected them,” Tvert said. “There appears to be near universal support for allowing the use of medical marijuana, and the majority in favor of broader reform is growing quickly. Our country might be divided on some issues, but more and more it is looking like marijuana policy is not one of them.”

Additionally, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a review of 10,000 medical marijuana studies published since 1999, showing that there was substantial evidence supporting the use of cannabis or its extracts for chronic pain treatments. It is well known that the opioid crisis was spurred by big pharmaceutical companies and the instances of over-prescribed addictive pharmaceuticals like Oxycontin and Vicodin, not because of cannabis.

Most states with legalized recreational cannabis have been found to have fewer prescription overdose deaths and less drug abuse. All of these things show us that President Trump’s administration may take a tougher approach than the Obama administration did in states that have legalized the use of recreational cannabis.