Why Is Cannabis Legalization Taking So Long, Attorney General Says They’re “Still Working” It

​When is cannabis going to be legalized?
Is it ever going to happen?

These are the questions most pressing on the minds of cannabis advocates and fans across America. Time keeps ticking on, and progress feels so slow.

Earlier this month the U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, said the Department of Justice is “still working on [creating] a marijuana policy,” and that they are also continuing to work on reviewing cannabis’s status on the Controlled Substances Act.

On October 6th, 2022, President Biden directed the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to officially review the Schedule 1 classification of cannabis. His request was not just to review it, but more importantly, to come to an answer on the subject, and do it quickly.

Garland said it’s fair to expect that a new cannabis policy “will be very close to what was done in the Cole Memorandum.” That Cole Memorandum was an Obama-era policy which basically told federal prosecutors to generally not interfere with states’ managment of their own cannabis laws. That direction was later rescinded by Attorney General Jeff Sessions under the Trump administration.

Garland also said that their work on a new cannabis policy is “not quite done,” because they have had to finalizing work on more pressing items for the department.

One Washington legislature who has been a strong advocate for cannabis legalization and reform, Democratic Representative from Oregon, Earl Blumenauer, has spent some of his time this past week promoting and passing around a letter he would like his fellow legislatures to sign, which asks for very clear and compelling reasons for whatever is the final decision on a cannabis policy. Blumenauer’s letter said, in part, “To ensure accountability in your conclusions—which has been absent in so much of the history of federal marijuana regulation—transparency is key. We urge you to make available for public review and comment any evidence cited to demonstrate marijuana is more prone to drug abuse than descheduled substances already regulated at the state level.”

Blumenauer has also been urging the administration to completely remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, as opposed to rescheduling it to a lower level.

Merrick Garland has repeatedly stated that he does not believe the federal governement should be wasting time and resources on the prosecution of people who are in compliance with state cananbis laws. He has said over and over that he believes it is not a good use of govenment resources.  Garland has also written on the negative effects from keeping cannabis criminalized at the federal level, pointing out that it has led to “mass incarceration and racial disparities in our criminal justice system,” as well as making “it difficult for millions of Americans to find employment due to criminal records for nonviolent offenses.” Garland said, “The Justice Department has almost never prosecuted use of marijuana, and it’s not going to be.”

However despite Garland's obviously strong conviction on this subject, in the five months since the President’s request to look into this matter, there has been no official change made in cannabis policy or Schedule status. So without yet having an official government policy, it’s merely his personal viewpoint, and there fore has no real bearing on the lives and businesses of cannabis consumers across the nation. In other words, it’s just lip service at this point, until actual change is made. And until that happens, cannabis’ current federal status continues to create myriads of other barriers and problems for state legal cannabis businesses and consumers.   

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