Following comments this week by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that the federal government could take action against adult-use cannabis programs in legal states, officials in those states have condemned the threatened crackdown. Not only could shutting down access to legal, regulated markets end up helping international drug cartels, they say, it could also wreak havoc on state budgets that rely on cannabis taxes and make cannabis easier for kids to obtain.
On Friday, California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a prominent supporter of Proposition 64, which legalized adult-use cannabis last November, sent a letter to President Donald Trump expressing these and other concerns. “The War on Marijuana has failed,” Newsom told the president, urging the White House not to stymie state systems. “We can’t continue to keep doing what we’ve done and expect a different result.”
Newsom also noted that cannabis “has been grown, cultivated, sold, and consumed for centuries — it is not new. But through our draconian and prohibitionist policies, we have outsourced much of this industry to an illicit market of criminals and drug cartels who have no regard for public safety and public health, especially as it relates to our children.”
Heres’s the full text of Newsom’s letter, provided to Leafly by his office:
