When it comes to drugs, it’s hard to imagine a Republican president deciding to pick up where his Democratic predecessor left off. Yet that is what President Donald Trump did yesterday, directing the Department of Justice to finalize a process, started under former President Joe Biden, that would recategorize how the federal government views marijuana. In so doing, Trump hands a huge financial benefit to the businesses seeking to profit from making pot more mainstream.
There’s no way of understanding the decision without seeing it as a triumph of commerce over long-standing cultural concerns, and of the libertarian, podcast bro faction of the Right over its traditional socially conservative wing. It’s also the wrong move. Improving the commercial viability of marijuana won’t make America’s citizens healthier or her cities more livable. If the goal of federal policy is to make America great, rather than just delivering benefits to a well-connected industry, yesterday’s executive order should be contested—and rescinded if possible.
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The executive order directs the Department of Justice to change the definition, or “schedule,” of marijuana under federal law. If the rule takes effect, marijuana will no longer be regarded as having no medical use and a high potential for abuse. Instead, it will be put on the same level as Tylenol with codeine, ketamine, anabolic steroids, and other drugs considered to pose a moderate-to-low risk of dependence and to have an accepted medical use.
The executive order also allows Medicare to reimburse for cannabis-derived products. That ensures public money will subsidize sellers of dubious, and sometimes dangerous, “health products.”
Proponents have argued both that rescheduling is necessary because marijuana has indisputable health benefits and also that rescheduling is necessary because more research is needed into marijuana’s potential health benefits. In reality, the purported medical benefits of marijuana are limited, while the personal and public health costs of increasingly prevalent and potent pot continue to rise.
As I wrote for City Journal when the move was first rumored, the question facing the White House was, on some level, simple: Should the policy of the United States be that the number of adults using marijuana on a regular basis should go up—or go down?
Any sober analysis of the number of young men rendered worse employees, or less desirable potential romantic partners, by a marijuana habit should lead us to favor the second course. Unfortunately, led on by firms promising big returns, the White House has chosen the first.
It wasn’t as though the move were opposed only by stick-in-the-mud revanchists. Just before the announcement, almost half of Senate Republicans signed on to a letter announcing their opposition. Influential voices from across the Right—Steve Bannon, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, and online firebrand Mike Cernovich— clearly saw the profit motive driving the move. So did younger voices like City Journal senior editor Charles Fain Lehman and independent journalist Saagar Enjeti.
But money talks. Thanks to Big Weed’s big pockets, this time it shouted. Until now, firms seeking to profit from pot faced a heavy tax burden and regulatory uncertainty. Now firms like Trulieve—a major marijuana company which put upward of $1 million into its full-court lobbying effort to persuade the president—can reap the rewards. The decision to reschedule could be worth billions to firms that would otherwise be paying steep corporate taxes.
Of course, there’s no way to achieve a projected $100 billion in revenue by 2030 if your industry is selling only to the sympathetic cases, like patients in severe distress seeking cannabis-derived pain relief. You can only get there by expanding the market—making the product more addictive, more potent, and more part of the American pharmaceutical landscape.
Just as sports gambling left Las Vegas and Atlantic City and climbed into your pocket, there’s undeniable financial upside from making every American city look like Amsterdam. The social costs, however, would far outweigh the pecuniary benefits.
Opponents have already promised litigation over the president’s decision. And Congress should not accept the move as a done deal. Recall that Gallup polling shows a sharp decline in support for legalized marijuana among Republicans. And a recent poll from my think tank, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, shows parents of young children, in particular, have real hesitations about making weed easier to access.
Congress should also take up the No Deductions for Marijuana Businesses Act, sponsored by Senator James Lankford and House Budget Chairman Jody Arrington, which would ensure that marijuana businesses remain unable to deduct their business expenses from their federal taxes despite the rescheduling.
The first year of the second Trump presidency has racked up some real wins, allowing conservatives to feel some wind at our backs. The Right can be grateful for that. But the rescheduling of marijuana is another example of how competing strains within the MAGA coalition don’t share the same ends.
Making weed more commercially viable is a win for well-connected investors. It’s a win, too, for the libertarian ethos that concerns itself with individual consent while ignoring social consequences. It’s a loss for an approach to politics that cares about the long-term effects of commercializing addiction, the quality of our public spaces—and, most importantly, the work and family trajectories of our young adults.
Photo by Seth McConnell/The Denver Post via Getty Images