The American people have made it clear that they don’t need presidential support to advance cannabis legalization, with fifteen states approving recreational pot since 2012. But it sure would help.
Although President Donald Trump has voiced small bursts of support for states’ rights on the issue in the past, his administration hasn’t shown much love for the plant. President-elect Joe Biden‘s record isn’t much more promising — he was a United States senator during the formative years of the War on Drugs, and as recently as last year said that cannabis was a gateway drug — but he and teammate Kamala Harris have pledged to decriminalize cannabis once in office, and some cannabis advocates hope that their support will lead to even more advancements on the federal legalization front in Congress.
To learn more about where the pot industry stands on a Biden presidency, we caught up with National Cannabis Industry Association spokesman Morgan Fox.
Westword: Did you get a sense on which way the cannabis industry’s preference was leaning on election night?
Morgan Fox: I think the industry was largely leaning toward a Biden presidency. Trump had four years to instruct his party to move forward with cannabis policy reform, but it never happened. While he voiced vague support for states’ rights, some members of his administration were outright hostile to the possibility of reform, and…
