Marijuana Politics and the 2024 Presidential Race
Marijuana Politics and the 2024 Presidential Race
So far, neither party has quite come to terms with the new reality of pot politics.
IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO PIN DOWN the exact moment when the mass of public opinion tips over and a once-fringe political opinion becomes the new consensus. Yet that’s what happened last month, when Ohio voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana in their state.
Since 2012, when Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana use, cannabis has been mostly a state issue.
But after Ohio’s vote, 54 percent of Americans now live in states where weed is legal for recreational use. In 24 states and the District of Columbia—together home to about 140 million American adults—it’s legal to buy marijuana in stores. Its formal status in federal law is unchanged—on the books, marijuana remains a Schedule I substance—although the details of enforcement are more complicated.
And it could prove to be a pivotal issue in the 2024 presidential election.
There has been a lot of interest in how the issue of access to abortion (which Ohio voters also supported last month) will play in 2024, and especially in how it divides Republicans. Legalizing marijuana, which receives far less attention, also divides Republicans. Indeed, Republicans have backed themselves into a corner by having to play to their base, which largely opposes marijuana legalization, while ignoring the independent voters (who are big in urban and suburban areas) they need to win in 2024.
Let’s look at the numbers. An October Gallup poll has support for legalized marijuana at an all-time high of 70 percent. Making it legal is favored by most subgroups (gender, education, age). Democratic and Republican voters diverge on this issue in the way you would expect (87 and 55 percent in favor of legalization, respectively), and independent voters come in right at the high new national average of 70 percent.
That last figure is particularly striking. Republicans lawmakers still talk about marijuana legalization as if it were a fringe issue that won’t drive many votes. Many traditionally conservative voters are growing more liberal on cannabis, but Republican officeholders and candidates have often worked to keep the issue off the ballot, and in some cases to repeal or limit referendums. They have done this because they believe it is a Democratic issue.
But they have that very wrong. As Terrence White, chairman of the i-71 Committee (a Washington-based group of business leaders who want responsible marijuana legalized) , recently put it, the GOP needs to drop its anti-weed game-playing:
I’m optimistic about the future of this industry—so much so that I’ve dedicated years of my life to building my business. It’s time to move past the prohibitionist thinking that has dominated marijuana legalization and focus on the facts. When you focus on what’s actually happening, rather than fear mongering, it’s clear that a legal and regulated recreational cannabis market is something Americans want Congress to deliver. Senate and House Republicans should take advantage of the opportunity to do so.
Many Democratic politicians appear to be on the same page. Sen. John Fetterman made a case for marijuana legalization that sounds a lot like the case for the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition:
It’s just so simple and so easy—just give people what they want. And again, make it safe, make it pure and make jobs. All the benefits are going to the cartels, but now, it should be going to the state. . . . There are things that are so much more lethal and dangerous and addictive—you don’t have any of those issues with cannabis.
Meanwhile, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, has a different view. After his state passed the marijuana legalization referendum, he opposed changing federal law to allow the now-legal marijuana dispensaries in Ohio to access traditional financial services, like business loans, deposit insurance, cashless retail transactions, and direct deposit payroll:
The [banking legislation] could pave the way for more widespread marijuana use and federal legalization. The [Department of Justice] also noted that this bill could facilitate money laundering. I am worried that this could open the door for other illicit activities, like the trafficking of fentanyl and methamphetamines.
If Vance’s logic (such as it is) seems familiar, it might be because of its similarities to the 1936 film Reefer Madness wherein high schoolers are lured to marijuana use, which destroys their lives and leads a prosecutor to demand that the marijuana seller should “be placed in an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his natural life.”
IN THE UPCOMING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, marijuana legalization could be an underappreciated issue in which the two candidates (assuming they are Donald Trump and Joe Biden) have divergent views.
While neither Trump nor Biden has released explicit marijuana policy proposals—a fact that is perhaps more a function of their age than anything—what they have said on the topic should be enough for voters to see where they each lean. And while Biden has been reticent about marijuana legalization (as opposed to decriminalization, which he supports), his administration has two things in the pipeline that could give legalized weed some added economic clout.
First there is the SAFER Bank Act, which has stalled in the Senate but may finally come up for a floor vote next year. (Given that it has already passed the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support, the success of the floor vote is likely.) This is the bill J.D. Vance was criticizing above: It makes it possible for legal state pot retailers to receive payment and banking services, insurance, and mortgage services from financial institutions that have so far steered clear of the industry to avoid becoming entangled in conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws.
Second, the administration is staying out of the way as the DEA considers reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule I to Schedule III controlled substance, a change recommended in September by the Department of Health and Human Services on the basis of an FDA study. The change would effectively legalize the medical marijuana industry at the federal level, which would lead to a variety of economic benefits for producers and distributors and would open the door to far greater access for medical consumers.
“The government is catching up to where Americans already are,” Tim Barash, the CEO of the cannabis software firm Dutchie, said in a recent interview.
Where that is playing out mostly is among the Americans over the age of 65, now the fastest growing group of cannabis users in the United States. That growth is because they are using various cannabis products to help address some of the nagging nuisances of aging: poor sleep, aches and pains, mood problems. Many baby boomers prefer marijuana over other prescribed medications, such as sleeping pills, antidepressants, and opioids.
“A hundred percent of them vote, and they are using (marijuana) for a ton of medicinal reasons. . . . It is dramatically more mainstream than it was just a few years ago [and] is clearly part of the political calculus.”
In October 2022, President Biden announced some of his weed-related plans and gave a cursory explanation for his cautious and gradual change of heart on the issue. “Even as federal and state regulation of marijuana changes, important limitations on trafficking, marketing, and under-age sales should stay in place,” he said. But he continued: “Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs.”
Trump, meanwhile, has waffled on whether marijuana law should be left up to the states. As president, he signed the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp growing, but his administration advanced other policies hostile to cannabis users, especially immigrants. His stance appears to have hardened further since he left office. In April, Trump gave a speech at a National Rifle Association meeting that included the suggestion that the use of “genetically engineered” pot could cause “psychotic breaks” that lead people to perpetrate mass shootings. It would be hard to advocate for the DEA to reschedule marijuana if you believe it’s driving people to indiscriminate murder.
MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION is an issue that has suddenly caught a new political wind, one that promises to carry Democrats much further than it will the GOP. In the old days, the Republican belief in less government and more individual liberty provided an ideological foundation for conservative policy programs. Trump threw this arrangement wholly out of joint. In GOP circles today, conspiracy theories abound and the party is directionless on policy because it doesn’t know which way to go on foundational questions.
As the presidential contest gets hotter and faster in 2024, you will doubtless hear the Biden campaign playing up their claim to represent the party of legal sports betting, abortion rights, and legalized weed. They will likely play down yesterday’s hot Democratic issues, especially the ones perceived to have a dorky or hectoring aspect—climate change, controversial ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policies, and urban walkability promotions.
While Biden probably won’t say much about marijuana during the campaign, we can count on Trump to do enough talking for both of them—probably on both sides of the issue, because he can’t help it. Right now, he is pushing for tougher drug laws (and has even proposed executing drug dealers and advocated “war on the cartels”), but this spring he said that while marijuana “does significant damage,” from “a voting standpoint, it’s a pretty popular thing.” The Republican party’s incoherence is rooted in his own.
THE GROWING ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE of legalized weed, and the financial implications of the industry’s legal emergence, could also be an issue in 2024.
Call it “Reefer Gladness”: Compare the economic impact of marijuana to that associated with another Republican mainstay issue, guns and ammo. Firearm and ammunition sales were an estimated $20 billion in 2022. Marijuana (retail and medical) sales hit about $50 billion. Gun sales are flat or decreasing while legal marijuana sales are increasing exponentially. The economics are why the D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project provided $2.8 million to the Ohio legalization campaign (about half of their total funds). A recent Ohio State University study explained why that money may have been well spent: “As more years pass after recreational legalization, the economic effects also become more statistically significant. . . . we conclude that the economic effects from recreational marijuana legalization do not diminish with time.” In other words, the longer marijuana is legal, the more economic activity it creates.
That economic activity could have tangible effects for individual voters. Most recent marijuana legalization passage referendums not only make weed legal to purchase in state-regulated retail stores, but also allow people to grow their own. In Ohio, each adult is now allowed to legally grow six plants each year. The price of medium-grade marijuana in Ohio is about $8.31 per gram, and each plant produces about 112 grams of smokable marijuana. All together, legalized weed could be worth about $5,500 annually to each Ohioan who wants to grow some in the back yard. How do you tell voters that you are opposed to giving them an opportunity to make an extra $5,500 per year?
And money would flow into the tax coffers, too. While Trump wants to take military action against the cartels, legalizing and regulating marijuana would let the United States eat their lunch. This cash grab from those purveyors of misery and violence could be a big draw for voters in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, where pot is already legal according to state law; they stand to collect even greater benefits from financial changes at the federal level. And in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Republican legislatures are trying to block legalization, its proponents will point out the sales tax revenues being left on the table.
In Florida, where a new poll shows that 67 percent of the total electorate is in favor of legalized marijuana (including 69 percent of independent voters and 72 percent of women), the Republican Florida attorney general is fighting to keep the issue off the 2024 ballot in a case now before the state supreme court.
The outcome may place Trump in an odd predicament: He might either have to justify a decision preventing voters from having a chance to cast ballots on the issue (as they did to approve a constitutional amendment legalizing medical cannabis in 2016), or tell voters why they should vote for him but against legalizing marijuana, an issue his old, conservative Sunshine State base feels strongly about. Of course, Trump being Trump, perhaps it’s just as likely that he makes a joke of the whole thing and invites Floridians to vote however they like.
Daniel McGraw is a freelance writer and author in Lakewood, Ohio. Twitter: @danmcgraw1.
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