How The Government Shutdown Is Affecting The Cannabis Industry
The government shutdown is approaching its fourth week, making it the longest federal closure in the history of the United States. Last Friday, some 800,000 federal workers received pay statements although no pay, and saying that the current state of the administration is a mess is sorely an understatement while the President continues to negotiate with the Democrats about funding for the inane border wall.
The government has shut down 19 times since 1976; some of them lasting just a few days while others went on for many weeks. It doesn’t matter how long the shutdown will last, because it will hurt everyone in the medical cannabis industry including patients themselves.
How The Shutdown Is Affecting Hemp Farmers
The situation is severely hurting the legal cannabis industry in the United States. Due to closures at the US Department of Agriculture and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the hemp industry is at a standstill. Just before 2018 ended, President Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill into law, which legalizes the domestic cultivation of hemp. This landmark bill will, for the first time in many decades, allow farmers to cultivate, process, and sell hemp commercially.
Hemp farmers in 40 states, especially those struggling, were eager to start as it promises a viable and lucrative source of income. But with the shutdown, they have no choice but to wait. The first step to getting started is that farmers living in states including Minnesota, Utah, and Pennsylvania are required to undergo background checks, which is impossible as the FBI is shut down. The background checks are only one of many legal hurdles that hemp farmers will need to jump through to start growing hemp, but no one is at the government offices to help them.
Furthermore, state hemp programs can’t be approved by the US Department of Agriculture until the appropriations bill has been signed off by the US Congress and the federal government finally reopens.
What About The Rest Of The Cannabis Industry?
Federal law states that cannabis is still illegal in the United States, despite the fact that 32 states now have a medical marijuana program in place while 10 more have permitted recreational use. But with the government shutdown, the entire US legal cannabis industry is at risk of a federal crackdown.
The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, a 2014 piece of legislation that protects state MMJ programs from threats of a federal crackdown, expired on December 22. Until a new bill has been signed, it will not be renewed, and while the Justice Department is operational, everything remains risky for the legal cannabis industry. The DOJ created a contingency plan specifically for the government shutdown, sparing several employees from furlough. “Criminal litigation will continue without interruption as an activity essential to the safety of human life and the protection of property,” reads the contingency plan. Attorneys still enjoy protection since they “are needed to address ongoing criminal matters and civil matters of urgency throughout the nation.”
“All agents in DEA field organizations are excepted from furlough because they support active counternarcotics investigations,” reads the contingency plan. In other words, while protections for state MMJ programs have expired, federal enforcement privileges haven’t, and a crackdown can happen at any time.
However, the Justice Department and prosecutors may not be prioritizing cannabis or going on raids. It remains to be seen, but in all cases everyone needs to be prepared. In fact, the Justice Department may end up prioritizing violent crime or illegal immigration, particularly because the border wall is the most heated discussion these days.
What About Medical Marijuana Patients?
Chris Lindsey, Senior Legislative Counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, disclosed to Civilized last November that even if the shutdown includes the Joyce Amendment, a budget rider stating that the Justice Department can’t allocate funds to meddle with state cannabis laws, there’s just a very small chance that it would result in them going after medical marijuana users.
“Almost everything dealing with regulations and management of the medical cannabis and adult use industries is really in the hands of the states, so a federal shutdown would be an inconvenience for many, but I don’t expect it would impact operations or access,” Lindsey says. “If anything, it might result in less federal interest in those that are participating. Because, if anything, a government shutdown would lead to less resources to go after individuals or businesses.”
So while it’s unlikely for medical users to get prosecuted, they are still vulnerable of being exposed.
Until the government gets their act together, there really is no surefire way of telling what exactly will happen from one day to the next.
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