It’s no secret that President Trump loves a grand gesture. That was supposed to be the case with his plan to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. However, the move wasn’t met with much fanfare, just a little bit of confusion.
But the fact that legalizing marijuana is a popular stance does not go beyond Trump and his cohort, and the marijuana industry as a whole is very aware of this.
Salon has found some concrete examples in which the marijuana industry is putting their money where their mouths are.
“Over the past couple of months, four major marijuana companies — Verano, Curaleaf, Trulieve and Vision Management Services, a subsidiary of Green Thumb Industries — each gave $2.5 million to America First Agriculture Action Inc., a Trump-friendly super PAC,” the article states. There are even more donations beyond this, but these four serve as the best examples.
This is the fascinating ordeal of a president like Trump: he follows a whim, and his whims follow the money. It’d be stupid not to play ball if you’re an industry that could gain as much as the marijuana industry.
The issue continues to be the Republicans who disagree with legal marijuana out of principle. The disciplined ones. Despite most lawmakers on the right feeling the need to follow Trump wherever he goes, there are still some holdouts in this field.
However, this quote from Joe Gerrity, CEO of Crescent Canna, brings up the elephant in the room.
“The reality right now is [that] Congress isn’t getting anything done and the Trump administration has shown a willingness to move otherwise stagnant issues forward. There’s no doubt it’s politically popular to embrace the cannabis industry from a party perspective, and frankly, it shocks me that we still haven’t seen a Democrat come out of the fold in a leadership position wholly embracing marijuana and pro-cannabis legalization.”
The fact that the Democrats are allowing this issue to slip out of their fingers is a sign of catastrophic confusion and lack of vision in the party. Unfortunately, this is likely the path we’re already deep within.
Read the original article at Salon.
