Reports indicate that the Trump administration is weighing up whether or not to continue the marijuana rescheduling initiative started by the Biden Administration. The president told donors recently, “we have to take a look” at the matter.
Trump, who recently spoke at an $1 million per plate fundraising dinner in his Bedminster New Jersey club, told CNN and The Wall Street Journal, “That’s a thing we will look into.”
Cannabis industry watchers have been waiting for signs that the Trump administration would follow through with its campaign promise to reschedule cannabis.
The Journal reported that Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers attended the dinner at which Trump discussed briefly marijuana in this month’s issue.
Abigail Jackson, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said to CNN “all legal and policy implications and requirements are being taken into consideration” in relation to marijuana.
She stated that “the only interest that guides the president’s decisions is what is best for the American people.”
CNN reported there was a rift within the Obama administration over cannabis. Some advisors encouraged the President to act on his popular campaign promise, while others warned that loosening the marijuana laws could have negative moral and legal consequences that would outweigh any potential benefits and backfire political.
CNN reported, citing sources, that White House Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles asked agencies to present their views on cannabis redistribution. These responses are “now sitting in a file on her desktop.”
While Trump endorsed rescheduling cannabis—as well as industry banking access and a state-level legalization initiative in Florida—on the campaign trail last year, he’s been silent about the issue since taking office for his second term.
Federal Election Commission documents published recently show that in the first half this year, a political committee funded by the marijuana industry donated $1,000,000 to Trump’s MAGA Inc. mega PAC. Trulieve’s CEO Rivers, who attended the dinner at which Trump spoke about cannabis, donated $250,000 to this industry PAC.
The PAC also reported an expenditure $120,500 to a strategic consulting and research firm associated with Trump, Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, LLC, for “legal” services. The same firm conducted a survey of registered voters that showed a majority of Republicans back a variety of cannabis reforms that is promoted on the PAC’s website.
Scotts Miracle-Gro’s owner recently stated that Trump had told him personally “multiple time” after taking office, that he would see the marijuana deregulation process through.
Earlier FEC records also previously showed that Trulieve and Curaleaf contributed a total of $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee following his election last November.
Trump’s former acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also recently predicted that the administration will soon “dig in” to the state-federal marijuana policy conflict, emphasizing the need to “eliminate confusion, not create it” amid the rescheduling push.
Meanwhile, Terrence Cole, who was sworn in last month as the new administrator of the DEA, declined to include rescheduling on a list of “strategic priorities” the agency that instead focused on anti-trafficking enforcement, Mexican cartels, the fentanyl supply chain, drug-fueled violence, cryptocurrency, the dark web and a host of other matters.
That’s despite the fact that Cole said during a confirmation hearing in April that examining the government’s pending marijuana rescheduling proposal would be “one of my first priorities” after taking office.
Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, predicted earlier this week that Trump will not legalize pot, even though it is an entirely separate matter from the current proposal to reschedule marijuana.