Politics
Trump Will Not Legalize Marijuana, Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Says
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and journalist Mark Halperin are of opposing minds when it comes to the question of whether marijuana will be federally legalized under President Donald Trump.
During an episode of their podcast, The Morning Meeting, the two commented on an executive order the president signed on Thursday allowing cryptocurrency in 401K retirement accounts.
Spicer, who served during Trump’s first term, said if someone told him 10 years ago that a 79-year-old GOP president would be “leading the way on crypto and AI,” he wouldn’t have believed it, saying “there’s no way” because “the Democrats would have seized both of those issues.”
Halperin replied that “you left out marijuana legalization, too,” kicking off 30 seconds of cross-talk where the two went back and forth about the possibility.
Spicer: “Well, we’re not getting—that’s not going to happen. That will not happen.”
Halperin: “Oh, it will. Oh, it will.”
Spicer: “No, not under this president. No, no, no.”
Halperin: “It will.”
Spicer: “He will not do that, no.”
While Trump endorsed rescheduling cannabis—as well as industry banking access and a state-level legalization initiative in Florida—on the campaign trail, he’s hasn’t publicly endorsed federal legalization.
But people within Trump’s circles have given mixed assessments of what, if anything, he will proactively do to advance cannabis policy reform in general. Certain industry stakeholders do seem somewhat enthusiastic about the possibility that he’ll make good on his campaign pledges, however.
Case in point: Newly published Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show that a marijuana industry-funded political committee donated $1 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC in the first half of this year.
The PAC also reported an expenditure $120,500 to a strategic consulting and research firm associated with Trump, Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, LLC, for “legal” services. The same firm conducted a survey of registered voters that showed a majority of Republicans back a variety of cannabis reforms that is promoted on the PAC’s website.
The owner of the major gardening supply company Scotts Miracle-Gro recently said Trump has told him directly “multiple times” since taking office that he intends to see through the marijuana rescheduling process.
Earlier FEC records also previously showed that Trulieve and Curaleaf contributed a total of $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee following his election last November.
Trump’s former acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also recently predicted that the administration will soon “dig in” to the state-federal marijuana policy conflict, emphasizing the need to “eliminate confusion, not create it” amid the rescheduling push.
Meanwhile, Terrence Cole, who was sworn in last month as the new administrator of the DEA, declined to include rescheduling on a list of “strategic priorities” the agency that instead focused on anti-trafficking enforcement, Mexican cartels, the fentanyl supply chain, drug-fueled violence, cryptocurrency, the dark web and a host of other matters.
That’s despite the fact that Cole said during a confirmation hearing in April that examining the government’s pending marijuana rescheduling proposal would be “one of my first priorities” after taking office.
Ahead of Cole’s swearing-in on Wednesday, the Senate a day earlier gave final approval to the Trump nominee. Almost immediately afterward, a major marijuana industry association renewed the push to make progress on the long-stalled federal cannabis rescheduling process.
