Why Members of the Right Should Cheer Marijuana Legalization

Republicans looking for a winning issue with broad crossover appeal in 2020 and beyond need look no further than the federal legalization of medicinal cannabis. Depending on which poll you look at, somewhere between 60 and 66 percent of Americans favor full legalization of marijuana on the federal level, up from roughly 57 percent two years ago and roughly 51 percent five years ago. Nearly 90% of Americans live in an area in which either medicinal or recreational cannabis is available; ten states and the District of Columbia have fully legalized cannabis use in recent years, and another 36 states have allowed various forms of medical cannabis use. Two bills currently working their way through Congress, the STATES Act and the SAFE Banking Act, will, if passed, protect state-legal cannabis companies from federal interference and provide these companies with critical access to U.S. banking and credit card processing services, respectively. As numerous lawmakers and industry leaders have reiterated over the last year, the genie that is the cannabis movement in the U.S. is not going back into the bottle, and the federal government must now transition from a mindset of deliberate indifference to the emerging cannabis space to the implementation of long-overdue policy reforms to keep up with the budding marketplace.