Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump may decide pot’s fate in state
TALLAHASSEE — More than 71 percent of voters approved an amendment expanding medical marijuana in Florida last month, but the fate of patients who rely on the drug and the burgeoning marijuana industry could largely depend on President-elect Donald Trump.
“A lot of what the industry is based on is some of the discretion that’s going on at the federal level,” said Michael Bronstein, cofounder of the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp.
Florida and 27 other states now have laws legalizing marijuana in some form. But federal law still bans the growth, cultivation, sale and possession of marijuana for any purpose.
Yet the marijuana industry has been allowed to grow in recent years because of a memo issued by the Obama administration in October 2009 to federal prosecutors telling them to direct limited federal resources into investigations of large-scale drug dealers that aren’t in compliance with state laws or are involved with foreign drug cartels. The memo said sick patients following state laws shouldn’t be targeted.
But that could change with the switch to a new administration. Trump’s recent announcement of U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as his pick for attorney general could spell trouble for the industry. Sessions is a former federal prosecutor and harsh anti-drug warrior. During a hearing in April he called marijuana “dangerous” and said “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
“Are there people panicking and should people be panicking? Absolutely,” said Ben Pollara, campaign manager for United for Care, the group that pushed for the medical marijuana amendment. “But there are also reasons to not be so terrified.”
For one thing, he said, marijuana is popular among voters, including some Trump supporters. More than half of states have some form of law legalizing marijuana, so he said it’s becoming “too big to fail.”
“[Trump’s] base was white men without a college education,” Pollara said. “Guess what marijuana’s base is?”
Trump has taken contradicting positions on marijuana over the years. In the 1990s he said drugs should be legalized. During the campaign he told the Washington Post it should be left to the states. He later told Fox News he was “100 percent” in favor of medical marijuana but unclear on how he would handle the issue as president.
In an emailed statement, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the presidentelect is focused on filling Cabinet posts “and there will be plenty of time to discuss detailed policy specifics after the swearing-in.”
Compared with other states such as Washington and Colorado that allow recreational pot use, Florida’s medical marijuana industry is smaller, newer and more tightly regulated. The Florida Legislature passed a law in 2014 letting patients with chronic seizures have access to a non-euphoric form of the drug.
The amendment passed by voters last month expanded state laws to offer more potent pot to patients with HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, cancer, glaucoma, post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis and other ailments.
Lawmakers, though, must pass a bill next year setting the regulatory framework for how the new industry will operate. Then there are the rules that cities and counties could pass regarding where pot dispensaries can set up shop. It all adds up to an uncertain future for those in the medical marijuana industry.
“No one has a crystal ball as to how this will work,” said Jake Bergmann, CEO and co-founder of Surterra, a Tampa-based company that began providing medical marijuana to Florida patients this year. “We are taking a pretty big risk not knowing what the regulatory environment is. That’s just part of the territory.”
Ken Sukhia served as a U.S. attorney for the North Florida region in the 1990s when Sessions was a federal prosecutor in a nearby Alabama district. He said despite Sessions’ staunch antimarijuana positions, he didn’t target small-timers.
“His office was no different than ours. He didn’t go after possessors,” Sukhia said. “There were much more significant cases.”
Arresting growers and medical marijuana company operators would also snuff out a growing industry. According to a report from the Arcview Market Research firm, legal pot sales topped $5.4 billion in 2015 and are projected to rise to $6.7 billion this year. Florida sales could hit $1.4 billion by 2020.
Sukhia also noted that a crackdown on pot by the Trump administration could lead to a backlash from states. That could create unnecessary headaches for Trump, who is more likely to be focused on immigration and economic policies.
“Apart from some exercise of discretion in [marijuana enforcement], the alternative, which is full federal prosecution, will create a great deal of acrimony between the states and the feds,” Sukhia said.