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May 09, 2017 12:34 PM UTC

Trump Reserves The Right To Take Your Medical Weed, Too

  • 19 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Molon labe.

Take note stoners, as the AP reports via the Cannabist:

President Donald Trump signed his first piece of major legislation on Friday, a $1 trillion spending bill to keep the government operating through September…

Trump signed the bill despite his objections to numerous provisions included in the measure. One such provision prohibits the Justice Department from using any funds to block implementation of medical marijuana laws by states and U.S. territories. In a signing statement that accompanied the bill and that laid out his objections, Trump said he reserved the right to ignore the provision. He held out the possibility that the administration could pursue legal action against states and territories that legalize marijuana for medical use. [Pols emphasis]

Marijuana remains illegal for any purpose under federal law. The White House previously signaled a looming crackdown on recreational pot use.

“I will treat this provision consistently with my constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” Trump said in the signing statement, a tool that previous presidents have used to explain their positions on appropriations bills.

Reserving the right to take a given action is not the same thing as doing it, of course, but it should be noted that President Donald Trump has reserved the right to crack down even on medical marijuana, not just legalized recreational marijuana. While medical marijuana likely has more supporters among non-consumers as a general health and compassion measure, recreational marijuana is where the money is–and a threat to recreational marijuana is a much greater threat to Colorado’s economy.

Well, it appears Trump isn’t even entertaining a question about recreational marijuana anymore–and is staking out the ground necessary to go after medical marijuana too. All of which is consistent with what Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said on the matter, though apparently nobody wants to believe it.

Our advice would be to smoke up while you can. Also, is marijuana hoardable?

Comments

19 thoughts on “Trump Reserves The Right To Take Your Medical Weed, Too

  1. Sorry stoners, but if Trump decides to shut down the weed industry it's in his rights to do so. Not everyone in Colorado supports this social experiment, and marijuana is illegal under federal law. Deal with it.

    1. so, poop for brains, the tenth amendment is just a piece of shit that you and Beauregard can tear up at will?  

      Do you also hate the second amendment?   Inquiring Negevs want to know.

    2. Of course Moddy would think a state constitutional amendment passed by a majority of fellow Coloradans should be ignored. This is the same ignoramus that loves him a minority-elected President. You can't fix stupid.

      <yawn> 

       

    3. You ignorant fool…

      Trump can't shut down the weed industry. All he can do is fuck things up and drive the industry back into the criminal, non-taxpaying, black market. Do you really think anything your dim-witted master or his red-necked AG can do is going to prevent anyone from smoking pot if they want? Do you really believe it will accomplish anything but cause more pain and anguish? You are a supporter of returning to sending money to illegal importers, is that it, Fluffy?

      This move is directed by and for the benefit of Big Pharma and the private prison industry. Sessions will do whatever the billionaire class tells him to do. And they need ever more people taking the highly addictive opiods that are made right here in the USA. Why aren't you screaming for Eli Lilly and Merck to stop selling the deadly pills they make millions in profits killing people with…?

    4. Congress has the power of the purse, and in denying the Executive the right to spend any money on this they are executing an explicit authority they have. Trump can write signing statements all he wants – as much as Bush, even – but Congress and the law Trump just signed are the sole authority for funding this activity.

      The only question now is: are Trump and Sessions brazen enough to ignore a constitutionally-enacted law in order to wage their weed war?

  2. If I were Sessions or The Yam, I wouldn't be getting too grabby about legal cannabis. It would take a while for them to shut it all down and at the rate that All the President's Men are falling away, I'm not sure how long those two have.  

  3. I actually agree with Jeff Sessions on this. His job is to enforce the law. If Congress wants it to be legal, they should pass a law doing so. If the courts believe the 10th amendment stops the feds from making drugs illegal, they should rule so.

    But it's not the job of the DoJ to decide what laws count and what are ignored.

    1. David, full enforcement of Schedule 1 would also throw your mothers lifetime of work under the bus. I doubt you support that notion. There is no distinction between the two forms of Cannabis sativa in the Controlled Substances Act (thanks to Nixon) so Beauregard would be faced with unequal enforcement of "the law".  

      Thankfully we have a bit of a shield with Section 7606 of the Farm Bill but the DEA's position is that provision can be ignored when they want it to be.  The good news is we have an entire Congressional delegation (sans Lamborn) that support our farmers growing industrial hemp and the adult use growers/consumers as well.  

      I agree with you that Congress should deal with this (especially given that 60% of American adults believe marijuana should be legalized – 70% of Independents).  Unfortunately, minority-rule mindsets like our AG and Moddy believe they should have the power to thrwart the will of the majority. In their defense that mindset did perpetuate slavery in the South for far too long and it won them an election in 2016.  They should be wary of betting their personal or political futures on perpetuating Prohibition and our trillion-dollar clusterfuck, the "War on Drugs".  

       

      1. I love my mom and I also think all drugs should be legal. But I support our Democracy and that comes first. If we give the people at the top the right to ignore the laws they don't like, that's not a Democracy.

        1. Democracy is working its way up from the bottom (via the 10th Amendment in this case). Your Mom is one of the most special souls I know. If the Republican Party was a reflection of her values I'd have never left the party. 

        2. By "people at the top" you mean the bureauracy of the drug war.  I think the people at the bottom, who passed the laws authorizing medical and recreational marijuana, also have rights.   Both the 9th and 10th Amendments agree.  

          1. We also live in a time where 95% of the US population live in states where some form of marijuana legalization has already occurred, while a majority of US Senators represent states that account for only 30% of our population (the very states governed by Moddy-architypes). 33 states have now legalized industrial hemp in some form (one-half of the entire 2016 US hemp crop was grown in Colorado).  

            When you have old, white drug warriors like Chuck Grassley chairing the Senate Judiciary committee  and holding tightly to his belief that marijuana is a gateway drug, don't go looking to Capitol Hill for 'democracy' in action.

             

            1. Willful ignorance of the type championed by Grassley, Sessions, Christie, and so on, is still the only way ridiculous drug policies can continue. There is so much evidence that the lies upon which prohibition was built were, and still are, a construct of big business interests. And total bullshit, by the way.

              Hearst owned trees….DuPont made nylon…

              Industrial hemp was always the real enemy. Cannabis and its psychoactive effects were just the stick used to beat the truth into submission.

              Am I right about this, Michael?

    2. Congress did what they wanted to do (for now): they explicitly denied funding for enforcement. It's not legalization, but it is an acknowledgement that they want the current status quo of quasi-legal marijuana sales to remain.

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