Cannabis the Unstoppable Force!
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People are afraid of what the Trump administration could do to legal recreational cannabis. In fact, after they White House hinted that there might be a crackdown on legal weed, stocks in cannabis businesses dropped.
Is it possible that AG Jeff Sessions could end legal recreational marijuana? Well, yes. There are a few steps he could take to effectively shut down recreational cannabis all over the United States. However, if he does this…he’ll be running into some hefty problems that will put so much strain on the DOJ that there would be essentially no more resources available to battle…you know…crime.
How Jeff Sessions Could Shut Down Legal Marijuana
I am no law expert, I have never pretended to be one. So I’m going to hand this part over to Mark Kleiman who did an interview on Business Insider. Here’s the particular excerpt from the transcript of the interview.
“So yeah, if ... the justice department wanted to shut all the legal markets down, they could do that within weeks at very low resource cost. They go into the state regulatory agencies, they get all the license applications, which I think are public record, but if not, they can subpoena them, they take that pack of applications to the nearest US Federal District Court and say, “Your Honor. here are people who have signed an application for permission to commit a Federal felony. Please enjoin them from doing so.” That injunction issues without even hearing from a lawyer on the other side. And then you use the contempt power to enforce it.
So they could destroy the legal market overnight….”
Business Insider, Mark Kleiman
As you can see, there is a legal framework to essentially ‘shut down’ legal marijuana. It wouldn’t even cost them that much time or resources to pull it off. However, I highly doubt that the DOJ will do this mainly because of what Kleiman said earlier….
“Because there are 4,000 DEA agents worldwide. There are 500,000 state and local cops. If a state doesn’t want to enforce its cannabis laws, the Federal government really cannot step into those shoes. And, again this is hard Constitutional doctrine. The Federal government may not require a state to make something criminal or to help enforce safe Federal law.”
That’s right, there are only 4,000 DEA agents worldwide. That’s not nearly enough people to control the 50 million regular tokers in the United States. So enforcing Federal law in places that have legalized it is nearly impossible. Why do you think the Obama administration decided to ‘let it play out’ (despite the fact that there were many raids under his admin)?
You can’t keep a good weed down
Okay, now we have seen ‘how Sessions’ could essentially end legal weed overnight. Now let’s take a closer look at the cannabis market as a whole. Even when there was no ‘legal cannabis state’, the marijuana market thrived.
In fact, it was one of the top earners for illegal cartels and is only now being negatively affected (for the cartels) post legalization. Therefore, even if you were to shut down the legal market, the black market is more than ready to fill in the gaps again. In fact, they encourage it.
There are numerous problems with black market weed.
- Turf disputes often get resolved with violence
- Untested products
- No safety standards
- Irregular prices
- No tax benefits
- Heavier strain on the Justice system
Hell, I could go on forever.
Legal marijuana directly dealt with many of these issues. It increased profits while decreasing costs. It’s a win-win scenario for any state that legalizes.
The point I’m trying to make here is that even though Sessions manages to shut down legal marijuana, he isn’t going to “get rid” of marijuana….the thing is he never will be able to. It’s an unwinnable war and it’s costing way too much money.
The Will of the People
Cannabis is more popular than the government – That’s a Fact! With a vast majority in favor of legal medical cannabis and a slightly lower majority in favor of complete legalization; taking away people’s weed would be political suicide.
Trump is already one of the most despised US presidents of all time. To go after weed will be horrendously negative to his image. The administration would have so much opposition that they would be tied up with petitions, protests and congressional bills that would make it impossible for them to do anything else.
Americans can handle many things. But take away their weed and you’ll see a fury like never before. In fact, if Sessions were to attempt to shut down legal marijuana, I expect the backlash to be so significant that Congress will be forced to legalize marijuana all together.
Cannabis is an unstoppable force. It is the very “Will of the People” and we all know, that a government can suppress their citizens, but eventually the citizenry will rise like a tidal wave and heads will fly.
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