The Trump administration’s move to federally reschedule marijuana opens the door to interstate cannabis commerce—and it could happen through one of several unique pathways—according to a leading advocacy group.
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) said in a recent analysis that it’s closely monitoring the implications of a Justice Department order that moved medical cannabis authorized by states from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)—reasoning that “interstate commerce between licensed businesses would thus also be presumably federally legal” under the federal reform.
While the rescheduling order’s immediate focus is on state-authorized medical cannabis—and its federally legal status may be contingent on registration with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—MPP said it’s expecting to see the new policy put to the test, particularly as it concerns possible medical cannabis expansion and interstate commerce opportunities.
One of the direct impacts of rescheduling is that the limited number of states that don’t already have a law allowing medical marijuana use “will be under some pressure to adopt one,” MPP said.
Some states, like South Carolina, for example, have statutes on the books where federal rescheduling triggers mandatory state-level reform. In some of those places, however, “there’s little political appetite…for legalizing
Read full article on Marijuana Moment
