Trump Proposes Cutting Federal Cannabis Protections

President Donald Trump’s 2021 fiscal year budget proposal was released this week — the proposal suggests dropping federal protections for state-legal medical cannabis businesses and patients, Marijuana Moment reports. The proposal also includes restrictions to block Washington D.C., where cannabis possession and personal cultivation are legal, from establishing an adult-use marketplace.

It’s the third time the Trump administration has attempted to shut down the medical cannabis protections, which originated in 2014, but House lawmakers have continually reinserted the protections. President Obama had also removed the medical cannabis protections from his own budget proposals while in office.

The protections approved in the House last year also included a rider blocking federal interference in states with adult-use legalization policies, but that rider was blocked by the Senate.

President Trump’s budget proposal would also slash funding for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) from $425 million last fiscal year to just $29 million, nearly a 90% cut. Some of that funding would be funneled instead into the DEA to, “improve coordination of drug enforcement efforts among Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies in the U.S.”

Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D), who helped found the bipartisan Congressional Cannabis Caucus, called the proposal “an attack on 8 years of progress at all levels.”

“I will continue to lead the effort to protect state legal medical cannabis programs and seek to get new protections for adult-use and tribal programs. These are critical as we continue our fight to reform hopelessly outdated federal cannabis policies.” — Blumenauer, via Marijuana Moment

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R), a Trump ally who is also a vocal supporter of cannabis reforms, told Marijuana Moment that he expects lawmakers to ignore that section of the president’s budget proposal.

During the 2016 presidential election, then-candidate Trump said he supported medical cannabis and believed that individual states had the right to set their own cannabis policies.