Politics
Every GOP Senate Majority Leader Candidate Opposes Marijuana Legalization
With Republicans winning control of the U.S. Senate in last week’s elections, a key question for marijuana reform advocates and stakeholders is what the selection of a new GOP majority leader will mean for cannabis reform.
There are three names currently at the top of the list of potential majority leaders who will set the legislative agenda: Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Rick Scott (R-FL) and John Thune (R-SD). None have embraced ending prohibition, and each has a track record of expressing concerns about cannabis use or even moderate policy reforms such as those endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump on the campaign trail.
With Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) having already announced he will not be seeking to return to the leadership position, this will the first time since 2007 that the GOP caucus will be selecting a new majority leader. Republican senators are set to meet on Wednesday to make that determination.
Trump hasn’t endorsed a specific candidate to assume the top Senate role, but while Thune is generally considered a front-runner, certain of the president-elect’s allies such as Elon Musk have been pushing for Scott to become the chamber’s leader.
However it shakes out, the current contenders are united in their opposition to legalizing marijuana.
There are some in the industry who remain hopeful that Trump’s embrace of an unsuccessful Florida legalization measure, cannabis banking reform and rescheduling could move the party to fall in line. But the extent to which the incoming president cares enough about the issue to forcefully push for, or even occasionally mention, it from the White House remains to be seen.
After announcing his support for the policy change, Trump became relatively quiet on the issue ahead of the election—which may partly explain why his supporters evidently did not adopt his position, according to a recent poll.
And based on the records of the top contenders for Senate majority leader, it seems highly unlikely they would proactively try to enact reform legislation without a major push from the president.
Here’s where the top candidates for Senate majority leader stand on marijuana:
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
Cornyn has tentatively acknowledged that federal marijuana policy should be evaluated, calling the cash-intensive nature of the cannabis industry “a real threat” in 2019.
However, he said that the Senate should first hold a hearing on the “public health consequences” of ending cannabis prohibition before advancing legislation to resolve the financial services problem.
Even on the question of marijuana rescheduling, as proposed by the Biden administration and endorsed by Trump, the senator expressed opposition. In a public comment letter in July, he was among the 25 GOP congressional lawmakers who alleged that the government’s recommendation to move cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was based on politics rather than science.
He also suggested during a hearing with the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that the scientific review that led to the reform proposal wasn’t adequately comprehensive and involved a problematic change in process from past scheduling analyses.
🚨BIG🚨
Senator @JohnCornyn asks @SecBecerra about the flaws in the HHS marijuana rescheduling review at today’s @SenateFinance hearing.
Watch this 🔥 clip: pic.twitter.com/RMXeC3k2Kh
— SAM (@learnaboutsam) March 14, 2024
Cornyn additionally questioned whether the review examined health impacts of marijuana use on adolescent brains and pregnant women—echoing specific talking points that have been circulated by the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) to criticize the HHS recommendation.
Cornyn characterized current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) plan to advance cannabis banking legislation last summer as “wishful thinking.”
He also criticized Schumer’s support for a marijuana banking bill in a social media post.
As Congress seeks to avoid #SchumerShutdown, this is his priority: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says now is the time for Congress to pass legislation that would allow banks and credit unions to work with the legal cannabis industry. @BGOV
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) September 27, 2023
He also led a letter to Senate leadership that argued the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act would result in the cannabis industry producing higher potency products that would be harmful to youth and compromise “the integrity of the United States banking system.”
Despite having repeatedly talked about the importance of promoting cannabis research, Cornyn objected to advancing a bill to accomplish that on an expedited basis in 2022.
He also raised an objection to attaching an intelligence bill to the National Defense Authorization Act in 2022 if it included a Democratic-led provision to prevent security clearance denials over marijuana alone.
Additionally, he suggested in May that legalization “hasn’t eliminated the illegal activities of growers, distributors and users,” raising concerns about illicit cannabis grow operations.
Cornyn said in 2019 that claims about the therapeutic potential of marijuana remind him of decades-old tobacco industry advertisements asserting that the product had medical benefits. And last year, he tweeted a link to an article claiming that “many Americans wrongly believe exposure to marijuana smoke is safer than tobacco.”
Many Americans wrongly believe exposure to marijuana smoke is safer than tobacco, study findshttps://t.co/ZPKjyRnN9j
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) August 20, 2023
“From 1999 to 2020, more than 920,000 Americans died from a drug overdose,” Cornyn said in a 2021 constituent letter. “I am concerned that marijuana legalization could make this epidemic worse.”
Cornyn has separately promoted stories claiming that cannabis use is associated with psychosis and that Americans “wrongly” believe marijuana is safer than tobacco.
More teens and young adults who use marijuana are experiencing psychotic episodes. “This is attacking young brains.” https://t.co/cbCSbEK4VN via @WSJ
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) January 11, 2024
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)
In August, Scott said he believes “marijuana is a gateway drug,” which has informed his opposition to federal and state-level reform, including the failed legalization proposal that was on the ballot in his state of Florida.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure these don’t pass,” he said, referring to both the cannabis measure and another ballot initiative on reproductive rights. The senator, who previously served as Floridas governor, explained that he planned to vote against the marijuana initiative due to his brother’s struggles with drugs.
“People end up with addictive personalities, and so he did,” Scott said. “It messes up your life, and so that’s why I’ve never supported legalization of drugs.”
The senator doesn’t appear to have publicly commented on his position on marijuana banking reform, but a spokesperson told Cannabis Business Times this year that he likely opposes it.
In 2020, Scott and other Republican senators filed a resolution that criticized New Jersey’s governor for imposing restrictions to public spaces such as churches amid the coronavirus pandemic, while “commercial establishments like marijuana dispensaries and liquor stores were permitted to remain open.”
As governor, he signed a limited medical cannabis legalization bill into law, but controversially waged a legal challenge to prevent patients from having access to smokable products, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) later successfully pushed to overturn.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD)
Thune joined Cornyn and other lawmakers in the letter challenging the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling push, urging a reversal of the policy proposal.
As the Senate moved to advance a marijuana legalization bill in 2021, Thune said that cannabis reform is “something we’ll probably have to grapple with here.” But he’s consistently opposed even modest proposals to allow marijuana industry banking.
He called the then-Democratic-controlled House’s proposal to include cannabis banking reform in a large-scale coronavirus relief bill “crazy stuff” in 2020, complaining in a floor speech that the text of the underlying legislation mentions “cannabis” more times than “jobs.”
Was on the air with @hughhewitt this AM. We spoke about House Dems’ massive new spending package that’s really a grab bag of Dem agenda items disguised as #COVID19 relief. As was said, it mentions cannabis more times than it mentions jobs. Nobody is taking it seriously.
— Senator John Thune (@SenJohnThune) May 14, 2020
“In case Democrats didn’t realize, Americans aren’t suffering from a lack of cannabis right now,” Thune said. “They’re suffering from a lack of employment.”
He also said that Democrats’ push to advance a marijuana legalization bill was a “great illustration of the gap in priorities.”
A great illustration of the gap in priorities:
While Republicans are continuing to negotiate on COVID relief, Democrats are holding votes on a Tiger King bill & legalizing cannabis.
Let’s get serious & do our job for Americans.— Senator John Thune (@SenJohnThune) December 4, 2020
“While Republicans are continuing to negotiate on COVID relief, Democrats are holding votes on a Tiger King bill & legalizing cannabis,” he said. “Let’s get serious & do our job for Americans.”
Back in 2014, Thune said that while he understands that “people have strong opinions on both sides of this debate, I do not support legalizing the use of marijuana.”
“Currently, the medical benefits from the use of marijuana are still inconclusive, and I believe that we must be careful not to increase the availability of marijuana and the use of marijuana for non-medical reasons,” the senator said in a constituent letter. “However, I support the development of alternative medications that will provide relief to patients without opening the door to substance abuse.”
The next year, he called legalization a “dangerous path,” adding that voters who enacted the reform in Colorado are “going to pay a price for it.”
In 2021, Thune acknowledged that cannabis is an “area that’s still evolving, and our country’s views on it are evolving,” adding that “how we deal with it nationally I think is still an open question.”
For what it’s worth, voters in Thune’s home state of South Dakota approved a marijuana legalization initiative at the ballot in 2020, but it was overturned by the state Supreme Court. Voters subsequently rejected legalization proposals in 2022 and 2024.
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