It appears president-elect Donald Trump is recruiting a team that will have no qualms, whatsoever, about castrating the medical marijuana industry when his administration takes office in 2017.
According to a report from the New York Times, the Donald has selected six term Republican Congressman Tom Price, a vicious opponent of medical marijuana, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services – putting him in place to manage all of the federal government health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Although Trump’s choice for this position is intended to be a means for ripping to shreds President Obama’s health care law, there is some concern that Price’s influence could wreak havoc on medical marijuana.
It was recently revealed that Trump was putting on Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, another rabid opponent of marijuana legalization, to head up the Justice Department as U.S. Attorney General – making it possible for the protections currently in place to stop the DEA from raising hell in legal marijuana states to be crumbled up and tossed in the garbage.
But with Sessions and Price set to become the two primary voices of Uncle Sam’s hammer, there is not likely any chance the national marijuana laws will experience so much as a modest reform within the next four years.
As Tom Angell, chairman of the Marijuana Majority, recently pointed out in his analysis of the situation, Representative Price is responsible for voting against amendments designed to prevent the Justice Department from spending federal funds to tear down the medical marijuana community. In addition, Price has voted against amendments intended to give military veterans the freedom to secure medical marijuana recommendations through physicians employed with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
It seems the only marijuana reform Price has been willing to support, over the years, are those pertaining to low-THC cannabis oil.
The overall threat to the marijuana industry has been somewhat perplexing to those cannabis advocates who supported Donald Trump on the basis that he would bring about real change for real Americans. But while these folks were busy buying into his line of bullshit about deporting immigrants and building a 2,000 mile wall separating the United States and Mexico, they failed to consider what a President Trump, or any of his cronies, might do to the progress the nation has made with respect to the legalization of marijuana.
Even though the president-elect spent his entire campaign professing respect for state’s rights, indicating that he would possibly leave marijuana states to do their thing, the staff he has assembled thus far could be an indication of plans to put the brakes on any further reforms to the nation's canabis laws.
So far, it looks like the most likely scenario, if Price is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, is that marijuana will stand little to no chance at being downgraded to a Schedule II controlled substance – an action that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton swore to do had she won the elction.
