Canna Conflict: States, Not Feds, Control The Fate Of Marijuana Law And Policy

The National Conference of State Legislatures has cut to the chase, mandating Congress de-schedule marijuana altogether.

onAugust 14, 2017 at 4:20 PMAugust 14, 2017 at 4:27 PM

Last week, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) adopted a formal resolution that Congress enable financial institutions to serve marijuana businesses. The forcefulness of the resolution is a first from a cannabis angle: it did not ask Congress to pass a banking bill specific to cannabis, or even to revisit the FinCEN guidelines for financial services. Instead, NCSL cut to the chase, mandating Congress de-schedule marijuana altogether.

NCSL is a pretty big deal because it amounts to a collective and unified voice of the states as it represents all state legislators and their staffers nationwide. And NCSL seems to get more progressive on cannabis policy with each passing year, which makes sense since states are leading the way on cannabis law and policy reform. Last year, NCSL issued a resolution to remove marijuana from Schedule I, but not de-schedule it entirely. Next session, NCSL has hinted it may adopt a separate resolution calling on Congress to “make medical cannabis policy a national priority to expand access to affordable medicine.” That resolution is ultimately rooted in fighting our nation’s opioid problem.

The timing of the NCSL action is also important since it comes on the heels of Attorney General Jeff Sessions having received recommendations on marijuana enforcement policy from his Justice Department task force on drug policy. Though Sessions is ostensibly obsessed with shutting down state-legal cannabis, the Associated Press reports that the recommendations from his own department’s task force are basically to cool it. It becomes increasingly clear by the day that Sessions is on his own quixotic mission on cannabis.

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From Pilot and Above The Law

Still, he’s not throwing in the towel just yet. After recently failing to convince Congress to allocate funds to prosecute medical marijuana operators, Sessions wrote the governors of a number of cannabis-legal states with allegedly “serious questions” about their cannabis programs and enforcement under the Cole Memo. This letter was sent while federal agency representatives held secret meetings about marijuana policy with state and local officials in Colorado. What exactly those meetings covered is not known, but we do know Sessions has been using bogus weed statistics in an effort to further his Drug Warrior aims.

With Sessions working around the edges to promote his retrograde War on Drugs agenda, marijuana legalization proponents can be proud of NCSL and its refusal to kowtow to the Feds. As I’ve written before (and as I said in my TEDx Talk), states will continue to set the trend on cannabis legalization and policy and that is a good thing with Sessions at the helm and a divided Congress.

Hilary Bricken is an attorney at Harris Bricken in Los Angeles, and she chairs the firm’s Canna Law Group. Her practice consists of representing marijuana businesses of all sizes in multiple states on matters relating to licensing, corporate formation and contracts, commercial litigation, and intellectual property. Named one of the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry in 2014, Hilary is also lead editor of the Canna Law Blog. You can reach her by email at hilary@harrisbricken.com.