One of the first representatives to champion cannabis in Congress was Dana Rohrabacher, a long-serving Republican representing California\u2019s 48th district in Orange County.<\/p>\n
During his tenure, Rohrabacher co-founded\u00a0the Congressional Cannabis Caucus<\/a> and co-authored significant cannabis language in Congress. However, when he was unseated by Democrat Harley Rouda in the 2018 midterms, Rohrabacher left behind a mixed legacy, tarnished with an abnormal fondness for Russia<\/a>\u00a0and buoyed by his leading work on cannabis reform.<\/p>\n Rohrabacher is most famous in cannabis circles for spending a decade working to block the Department of Justice from spending its resources to go after state-legal medical marijuana patients and dispensaries, in what was first known as\u00a0the <\/a>Rohrabacher-Farr amendment<\/a>\u00a0and later became known as\u00a0the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment<\/a>. In recent years, he was also a staunch advocate of wider adult-use cannabis legalization. He stood alongside now-California Gov. Gavin Newsom in San Francisco as they announced in spring of 2016 that the Adult Use of Marijuana Act had garnered enough signatures to get on the ballot.<\/p>\n In 2018, Rohrabacher was one of seven representatives in California\u00a0that Democrats pushed hard to unseat during the midterm elections<\/a>. They were successful in unseating him from a position he\u2019d held since 1989. Today, Rohrabacher says, \u201cI\u2019m a free man after all these years,\u201d and he tells Cannabis Now that he has spent much of his time preparing his family for a cross-country move to the shores of Maine.<\/p>\n On Monday, we spoke to Rohrabacher over the phone about the future of cannabis policy in Congress, how he thinks cannabis legalization will influence the 2020 presidential elections and why he thinks President Donald Trump hasn\u2019t moved to legalize pot yet.<\/p>\n We asked Rohrabacher why much of Congress has not progressed at the same rate as their constituencies on the cannabis issue, given that recent polling shows\u00a084 percent of Americans support legalizing cannabis<\/a>.<\/p>\n He was quick to point out that his amendments blocking federal agencies from using funding to target state-legal cannabis businesses used more of a states\u2019 rights approach to garner support, as opposed to how any individual group might be polling.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a huge step forward from nothing to something,\u201d Rohrabacher said. \u201cNow what we need are a bunch of little steps in order to match that giant step we made, in order to make it work, in order to make it practical.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed to how impractical moves like blocking banking access to the legal market are, saying, \u201cHow stupid is that?\u201d<\/p>\n He said he believes there are a lot of issues like cannabis banking that, when rectified, will make the cannabis industry able to function like a real industry. He said the reason that these things haven\u2019t changed at the pace we would hope is a lack of leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had almost no leadership during the Obama administration,\u201d he said. \u201cI was expecting after we passed the original Rohrabacher-Farr amendment that, because I was just dealing with Democrats inside the Obama administration, we\u2019d be making a lot of progress. And we did not.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohrabacher said the Attorney General \u2014 though he did not specify under Trump or Obama \u2014 could have easily taken cannabis off Schedule I \u201cand we could have done a number of things.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohrabacher went on to say, despite former Attorney General Jeff Sessions\u2019 prohibitionist ideas and the president not making any concrete moves forward, the Trump administration has been on the right side of the cannabis issue.<\/p>\n \u201cHis [Sessions\u2019] presence became a real drag on everything,\u201d Rohrabacher said. \u201cBut as I said, I think President Trump has made it real clear he\u2019s on our side. Whether people use medical marijuana\u2026 whether personal use by adults should be left up to the states.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohrabacher said he believes one of the reasons there hasn\u2019t been a lot of movement on cannabis legalization under Trump is that the president was \u201cin survival mode\u201d before going into midterms last year. He now believes by the second half of 2019 there will be a federal legalization plan.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time we have a presidential election, there will be some more activity on it and the president will be on our side,\u201d Rohrabacher said. \u201cWhich will help out tremendously, especially if Biden is the Democratic nominee.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohrabacher added that former Vice President Joe Biden, who declared he was running as a Democratic candidate for president on April 25, was a huge proponent of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration. \u201cJoe Biden is a drug warrior, much more than the President ever was,\u201d Rohrabacher said.<\/p>\n While the cannabis legalization issue has become increasingly bipartisan, Rohrabacher said that if Biden became the Democratic candidate, the president could use it to make cannabis his personal cause.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it will all come down to who the nominee is for the Democratic Party,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it\u2019s Biden, and then we have President Trump talking about being the person that wants to liberalize marijuana laws.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Rohrabacher said he expects the primary battle to pull Biden closer to center on the marijuana issue, given that currently, he\u00a0is the only presidential candidate from either party advocating against marijuana legalization<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah, clearly Biden will be changing his position and altering it trying to pretend what he was doing before he didn\u2019t do,\u201d Rohrabacher alleged. \u201cHe\u2019s going to try and create the illusion he wasn\u2019t the ultimate drug warrior before. That\u2019s what he\u2019ll try to do. If anyone buys that from him, they\u2019re fools.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohrabacher believes if Biden were to make it all the way to the Oval Office, he thinks it unlikely that he would act on cannabis legalization. \u201cI\u2019d imagine the best we could get under Biden is no action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t just someone that wasn\u2019t going along with the people like myself,\u201d he said. \u201cI believe in freedom, that people have a right to control their own lives \u2014 and to consume, especially when it comes to cannabis, the plants God gave us. Biden doesn\u2019t believe that.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohrabacher said he hopes to convince Trump in the coming months to come out with a very strong pro-cannabis legalization position.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0when do you think cannabis will be federally legal?<\/p>\n The post Exclusive: Dana Rohrabacher Talks Trump & Why He Thinks Cannabis Will Likely Be Legal By 2020<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
One of the first representatives to champion cannabis in Congress was Dana Rohrabacher, a long-serving Republican representing California\u2019s 48th district in Orange County. During his tenure, Rohrabacher co-founded\u00a0the Congressional Cannabis Caucus and co-authored significant cannabis language in Congress. However, when he was unseated by Democrat Harley Rouda in the 2018Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,216,1348,1349,3696,81,129,42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34907,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34906\/revisions\/34907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why Congress Hasn\u2019t Acted More on Cannabis Policy<\/h4>\n
Why Rohrabacher Thinks Federal Cannabis Legalization Will Happen By 2020<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Exclusive: Dana Rohrabacher Talks Trump & Why He Thinks Cannabis Will Likely Be Legal By 2020<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"