Marijuana Business Magazine November-December 2019

Marijuana Business Magazine | November-December 2019 52 The election in 2020 may have many marijuana entrepreneurs and executives wondering what a new administration will mean for their businesses, especially because the Democratic frontrunner—former Vice President Joe Biden—is maintaining a marijuana policy platform that could take a virtual wrecking ball to the industry as it exists today. T he 2020 election season has been underway for months now, and some in the marijuana industry are still debating which candidate they’d like to see in the White House. From a business perspective, many may be happy to see sitting President Donald Trump re-elected, if only because his administration has taken a hands-off approach to the marijuana industry, apart from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions throwing the Cole Memo and other pre-Trump cannabis policies out the window in early 2018. But the election in 2020 may have many marijuana entrepreneurs and executives wondering what a new administration will mean for their businesses, especially because the Democratic front-runner—former Vice President Joe Biden—is maintaining a marijuana policy platform that could take a virtual wrecking ball to the industry as it exists today. Several industry news outlets and pundits have been speculating on this point for months, and one well- respected industry law firm, Seattle- based Harris Bricken, went so far as to grade several of the top-polling candidates on the issue. (Biden got the worst grade, a D, while U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey earned the best grade, an A+.) A Loner Leads the Pack Biden stands apart from the rest of the Democratic field in several respects, but when it comes to can- nabis, he’s practically a loner. He’s the only one of the top six Democratic candidates who isn’t in favor of federal legalization to some degree, opting instead to favor moving mar- ijuana from a Schedule 1 controlled substance to Schedule 2, putting it on par with cocaine, fentanyl, oxycodone and other narcotics that remain very tightly regulated by the federal government. That stance has already gotten plenty of executives in the marijuana industry sounding alarm bells because moving marijuana to Schedule 2 would likely open the door for a pharmaceutical takeover of the national cannabis trade. The move could, quite literally, be the end of the U.S. marijuana industry as it exists today. That makes for a pretty stark contrast between Trump and Biden—and a quandary for those in the sector who may not be fans of Trump but simultaneously don’t want to vote against their own business interests. Rescheduling would also likely set the stage for an intense political and, perhaps, legal fight between states Federal Marijuana Reform and the 2020 Election Trends & Hot Topics | John Schroyer

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