White House Closing In On Marijuana Regs

One Washington Representative said that the Trump administration plans to take on cannabis regulation reform after the midterm elections.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. told FOX Business that the administration has made a “solid commitment” to work on medical marijuana legalization.

“I have been talking to people inside the White House who know and inside the president’s entourage … I have talked to them at length. I have been reassured that the president intends on keeping his campaign promise,” he said.

“I would expect after the election we will sit down and we’ll start hammering out something that is specific and real,” added Rohrabacher, who is up for re-election next month. “It could be as early as spring of 2019, but definitely in the next legislative session.”

Trump has spoken in support of medical marijuana legalization on the federal level, while leaving recreational marijuana up to individual states. And Republicans and Democrats are even working together to make banking easier for marijuana-based businesses in those U.S. states where the drug is legal.

For the states where it is already legal, marijuana has become a booming business. Earlier this year, data showed that consumer interest in cannabis continued to rise in Colorado, where marijuana shops saw an increase of nearly 10 percent in sales between 2016 and 2017. The shops took in a haul of nearly $120 million in sales of recreational and medical cannabis in November of last year, which represents a 9.5 percent boost from the year before.

And analysts are predicting California’s market for marijuana to be massive: GreenWave Advisors (a cannabis financial analyst) estimated that California’s industry could be worth $5.1 billion in 2018, nearly doubling the industry’s entire value last year. In addition, one report out of investment bank Cowen estimates that legalization in California alone would triple the size of the nation’s legal marijuana industry within a decade.