Many Americans thought that the legalization would have to wait for Democrats to have the full control of the Congress.
However, so far we’ve noticed that Trump isn’t a classic partisan president. Going for cannabis legalization seems like a total Trump move.
So, let’s take a look at the few important things that happened in the last couple days.
DEA releases 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment
The Drug Enforcement Agency released a new assessment on drugs, in which it called for an immediate and undivided offensive against opioids and prescription medicine.
Opioid prescriptions in the United States have been on a steady rise for years, and president Trump declared it a national crisis earlier in the year.
The DEA reports that heroin-related deaths almost doubled between 2013 and 2016.
DEA also noted that the increase in opioid abuse led to a direct increase in heroin abuse and heroin-related deaths.
The increase in the abuse of prescription drugs is due to a huge presence of illicit fentanyl and synthetic opioids.
According to the former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, Trump is indeed planning on legalizing cannabis after midterms.
Anthony Scaramucci worked at the White House, and it is not certain whether this is just his hunch or a real plan on Trump’s behalf.
However, he is not alone in those claims.
Congressman Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) is also on the record saying that plans are already in the making.
Rohrabacher said in an interview with Fox Business that he’s been talking to people in the White House and Trump’s inner circle.
He said that the legalization effort could start as early as spring of 2019.
“I would expect after the election we will sit down and we’ll start hammering out something that is specific and real,” the congressman said.
Trump showed support for a bipartisan bill from the Senate which was led by Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is on his way out
One of the major talking points whenever someone brings up the point of federal legalization, whether it’s medical or recreational marijuana, is the “Jeff Sessions won’t allow it” one.
But I have some good news.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be on his way out of the office sooner than what most of us thought. I know I thought he was going to be in office for the whole term.
Senator Lindsey Graham mentioned on The Hugh Hewitt Show this week that Attorney General Jeff Sessions might be stepping down after midterms.
“Jeff will probably step down. We’ll have a new attorney general most likely early next year, ” senator Graham said.
That’s right, the same Jeff Sessions that said a few months ago that “a lot of heroin addictions start with marijuana” is rumored to be leaving office in a few weeks.
This is a big part of Trump “setting up the board” for cannabis legalization.
Sure, Sessions couldn’t block the legislation in any way or insist on the law to be one way or another, but he could have obstructed it.
Sessions wanted to do a huge federal crackdown on marijuana businesses earlier this year, but that didn’t go well.
He came down on the states which already legalized marijuana by rescinding the Cole memo, but that didn’t help his cause much as well.
My guess is that he finally realized that the general trend of legalizing marijuana is about to hit the federal government too.
He didn’t want to be a part of it before he took the job, and he is still one of the strongest proponents of marijuana prohibition.
That is why once the legislation is announced I truly believe Senator Lindsey’s words that he’ll resign.
