The industry is worried.
Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated anti-pot hardliner Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama (R) for Attorney General. At a Senate hearing in April 2016, Sessions said that ‘we need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger.’
“I think one of [Obama’s] great failures, it’s obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana,” Sessions said at the hearing. “It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started ‘Just Say No.’ ”
Lawmakers, he said, have to “send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
USNews calls Sessions an “ Existential threat” to state-legal cannabis. Industry leaders are very nervous.
Reason points out that Sessions has an “aversion to civil rights” and gay rights. The U.S. Senate failed to confirm him for a federal judgeship in 1986, amid allegations of what late Senator Ted Kennedy called “racial insensitivity” and “lack of commitment to equal justice under the law.” The New York Times editorializes that the nomination is an “ insult to justice.”
What does a Trump presidency mean for the industry? The transition team isn’t talking. NBC speculates.So does CBS.
The Sessions nomination needs to be approved by the Senate. Have a view you want to share? Contact your Senator.
Before the Sessions pick, the Washington Post’s Radley Balko said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would also be “ terrifying.”
Before the Sessions pick, anti-legalization activist Kevin Sabet said, “A Trump administration throws everything up in the air… “Is it going to be ‘ states’ rights Trump’ or ‘law-and-order Trump’?”
Marijuana.com’s Tom Angell has launched a petition for Trump to keep his “marijuana pledge” to respect state laws. Even if he doesn’t go after the industry, The Stranger says President Trump will make the industry whiter.
It’s official, Denver will be the first U.S. city to license social use businesses.
After the Massachusetts REC vote, Rhode Island could legalize REC through the legislature. Alaska is setting up a drop box system to collect taxes in cash.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery (R), said looser cannabis regulations in Memphis and Nashville can’t stand.
Due to a glitch, it appears that MED in California will be tax-free until the state’s REC program begins in 2018.
Some conservatives don’t like that MED patients can’t buy guns.