Trumping Pot: Will State Legalization Laws Survive?

[TomSea]

Trumping Pot: Will State Legalization Laws Survive?
    November 16, 2016
    Judith Lewis Mernit

Last Wednesday the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based drug-reform nonprofit, held a media conference call meant to celebrate a successful election night. Voters in eight states had legalized cannabis for recreational purposes; in several more states ballot measures cleared the way for marijuana’s medical use. In California, where Proposition 64 passed with 56 percent of the electorate, voters had not only legalized marijuana but, in the words of the organization’s California State Director, Lynne Lyman, “eliminated nearly every marijuana violation on the books.”

As of midnight election night, everything from transporting to selling pot had been decriminalized, reducing not just future convictions but triggering retroactive sentencing reform.

“Over a million Californians will have the opportunity to have their record cleared reduced and expunged,” Lyman said. “We won this. And we won it in a big way.”

More At: http://capitalandmain.com/trumping-pot-will-state-legalization-laws-survive-1116

Excerpted:

A Trump Administration: Social Policy Fiats on Day One

. Marijuana Legalization
Cracking Down on States That Have Legalized Marijuana

Donald Trump has been unclear about his stance on marijuana policy, saying both that it is a states’ rights issue and that he thinks legalization in Colorado “is bad and I feel strongly about it.”36 Clearer is the position of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is heading the Trump transition team and has been suggested as a potential Attorney General in the Trump Administration. Governor Christie is arguably the nation’s strongest high-profile opponent of marijuana legalization, arguing that, “Marijuana is against the law in the states, and it should be enforced in all 50 states.”37

In 2013, the Obama Administration instructed federal prosecutors to focus their limited resources on the most serious aspects of marijuana-related crimes, like distribution to minors and sales by gangs and cartels, rather than on states experimenting with legalization of personal medical or recreational use.38 The following year, President Obama went even further, providing the banks and other financial institutions that are serving marijuana businesses that are legal in their states with a path to do so while minimizing the risk of federal prosecution for money laundering.39 Because both policies are merely acts of prosecutorial discretion, Trump and Christie could revoke them immediately—and prosecute any of the banks, medical patients, customers, and business owners participating in the markets in the 25 states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. This will take us back to a world where dispensaries were raided and their proprietors arrested and prosecuted, just like what happened during George W. Bush’s presidency—even before a single state had legalized recreational use. A Trump Administration, particularly if it is led by a Christie Department of Justice, could also immediately file lawsuits against the states that have legalized marijuana in any way and spend millions of dollars or more in court trying to force those 25 states to comply with the blanket federal marijuana ban.

http://www.thirdway.org/memo/a-trump-administration-social-policy-fiats-on-day-one

[TomSea]

Conceivably, those who see Same-Sex Marriage as such a central issue; could look at this issue in a moral way as well.

A few years ago, when Washington and Colorado legalized marijuana, if I have my facts straight, I remember some opined, well, Obama and the Federal Government can crack down on it. Now, we have a president who conceivably could do that.

The above excerpt seems a bit obsolete, Christie doesn't appear to look to play a role or at least, major role in a Trump administration.