Cannabis industry insiders may have grown weary of peering into their crystal balls to determine whether federal reform of any kind is on the horizon during the new Trump administration, but it doesn’t appear that the murkiness will lift anytime soon.
That’s in spite of the president nominating a cannabis champion as drug czar and marijuana-funded ads running on televisions at Mar-a-Lago. Trump hand-picked former journalist Sara Carter to lead his Office of National Drug Control Policy, and in a social media post praised her reporting on the “Fentanyl and Opioid Crisis.”
Carter has called medical marijuana “fantastic” and said she has no problem with federal cannabis legalization as long as the industry is “monitored,” Marijuana Moment reported this week.
However, Carter’s vocal support for cannabis in general comes in stark contrast to positions taken by other key Trump appointees, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, who opposed medical marijuana legalization in her home state of Florida, and Trump’s choice to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terrance Cole.
One of the cabinet members with which Carter may somewhat align is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has in the past also been vocally supportive of marijuana reform, but who has since backed away from that position somewhat since joining the Trump administration.
That said, Carter’s previous vocal support will likely have little impact, since it’s literally against federal law for her as drug czar to support either rescheduling or legalization of marijuana or any other Schedule I narcotic. So it’s still very unclear what, if anything, her appointment will signify for cannabis business interests.
The Trump administration in general stayed silent on the topic when he retook office in January, although the presidential transition team did try to quietly sneak a version of the SAFE Banking Act into an omnibus spending bill in December, according to CNN. That attempt followed a campaign promise by Trump last fall, in which he said he’d be voting in favor of the Florida ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana (the ballot question failed anyway), and also asserted his support for federal marijuana rescheduling and other reforms that appeared to be gaining steam under President Joe Biden.
The rescheduling process – which would deliver billions in tax savings to the U.S. marijuana industry if it’s ever completed – has been stalled for months since Trump took office, and there’s not yet any signs it’ll be put back on track. A White House spokesperson recently told CNN that “no action is being considered at this time” on marijuana reform, and Trump’s own social media post about Carter didn’t mention cannabis.
Not content to rest on their laurels, however, a marijuana-backed political action committee called American Rights and Reform PAC has cobbled together a pair of TV ads that will be running in both Washington, D.C., and the West Palm Beach area, which includes Trump’s resort Mar-a-Lago, where he’s known to spend much of his free time.
The ads, first reported by Marijuana Moment last month, are seemingly written specifically with Trump in mind, and lambast both Biden and Canada, two of the president’s favorite targets. The PAC spent over $1 million on the ads, CNN reported, and apparently Curaleaf Holdings (CURA:CA) (TSX: CURA) (OTCQX: CURLF) helped pay for the effort. The ads both argue that Trump would benefit politically from enacting federal marijuana reform.
“This is an America First fight,” one of the ads intones, invoking a key political theme of Trump’s. “President Trump had the courage to sign Right to Try, healing American patients. Let’s do it again. Reschedule cannabis and put American first.”
Given how mercurial Trump can be depending on who’s bending his ear – and the variety of opinions in his administration on the topic of marijuana – the approach may just work. At this point, the industry has precious little left to lose.