President Donald Trump\u2019s former press secretary Sean Spicer and his long-time advisor Roger Stone are trading diverging takes on the prospect of the administration moving forward on marijuana rescheduling.<\/p>\n
Days after Stone made the case for reform in an op-ed for Marijuana Moment<\/a>, he discussed why he believes Trump will make good on rescheduling during an interview on The Sean Spicer Show that aired on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Spicer says he\u2019s not convinced, however, arguing that the president has been \u201cvery clear\u201d about his personal philosophy: \u201cNo drugs, no alcohol, no smoking, no tattoos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cExplain to me why you think Donald Trump, of all people, is going to declassify pot,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd as a conservative, Roger, prior to this big crackdown in D.C., walking through the city\u2014whether it\u2019s D.C. or New York\u2014I\u2019m tired of smelling urine and pot on every single block. It\u2019s disgusting, and I don\u2019t know why we\u2019d want to decriminalize it, never mind why Donald Trump would want to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n While Stone has pushed for broad federal legalization, the reform that\u2019s currently on the table would simply move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Trump endorsed the policy change on the campaign trail, but he gave less definitive comments about the issue when he announced late last month that a final decision would come within weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cSince 2016 when he got into politics, Donald Trump has always taken the position that this is a states\u2019 rights issue\u2014that the states should decide,\u201d Stone said. \u201cIt makes no sense to have federal law and state law contradict each other.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that he agrees with Spicer that \u201cpublic use of marijuana should be illegal, just like carrying an open container of alcohol is illegal. We don\u2019t have drinking on every street corner.\u201d<\/p>\n The conservative political operative, who has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents\u2014Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Trump\u2014then talked about how his own father benefitted from medical cannabis when he was undergoing treatment for cancer. The plant allowed him to regain his appetite and mitigate pain.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I believe this has a medicinal value, based on my own experience,\u201d he said. \u201cForty states have now legalized some form of cannabis, so all I want the president to do is to move it from a Schedule I drug, where it\u2019s classified with heroin, which is ridiculous, to be a Schedule III drug, where you can solve the banking issues in the states where it\u2019s legal, you can solve the taxation issues\u2014because the people who are legally in the business aren\u2019t, in many cases, paying federal taxes, and they should be.\u201d<\/p>\n Moving marijuana to Schedule III would allow licensed cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions they\u2019ve been barred from under an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code known as 280E. However, it would not on its own resolve marijuana industry banking issue. As long as it remains a controlled substance, many financial institutions are expected to continue to be wary of engaging with the cannabis sector.<\/p>\n Stone also noted that, with legalization, \u201cwe can regulate it so it can\u2019t be used in public, so you don\u2019t smell pot on every street corner.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a libertarian view, but it is consistent with the president\u2019s view that it\u2019s a state\u2019s rights issue,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to bring the state law and the federal law into sync.\u201d<\/p>\n Spicer conceded that Stone made a \u201ccompelling case,\u201d adding that he finds it hypocritical that people are penalized for drinking alcohol in public when he routinely sees people smoking joints in public.<\/p>\n The former press secretary also discussed the prospects for federal cannabis reform in a recent conversation with journalist Mark Halperin<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen. That will not happen,\u201d Spicer said of the possibility that Trump advances cannabis reform, while Halperin was more optimistic.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, nine GOP congressional lawmakers have called on the U.S. attorney general to reject what they called a \u201ccorrupt and flawed\u201d marijuana rescheduling proposal<\/a>.<\/p>\n In contrast to that letter from GOP lawmakers, a leading drug policy reform group recently launched a petition urging the president to go further than rescheduling by legalizing marijuana altogether<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Trump\u2019s Longtime Advisor And Former Press Secretary Discuss Marijuana Rescheduling Prospects<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s former press secretary Sean Spicer and his long-time advisor Roger Stone are trading diverging takes on the prospect of the administration moving forward on marijuana rescheduling. Days after Stone made the case for reform in an op-ed for Marijuana Moment, he discussed why he believes Trump willContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83084"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83085,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83084\/revisions\/83085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Trump\u2019s Longtime Advisor And Former Press Secretary Discuss Marijuana Rescheduling Prospects<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"