Donald Trump is reportedly mulling over a change in the way the US government sees cannabis.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was considering shifting cannabis down the classifications for dangerous drugs and getting it reclassified as a Schedule III drug.
This potential move would not actually legalise cannabis anywhere in the US but it would make the law far less harsh on the drug.
At the moment, cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug which is kept for drugs like heroin and are considered to have 'no currently accepted medical use'.
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Given that 40 out of 50 US states currently have laws which permit cannabis consumption in some way, shape or form for medical reasons then the US federal law is significantly out of step with the reality in the country.
Trump said last month he was 'looking at reclassification' and would make a decision on it in a few weeks time, saying he'd 'heard great things having to do with medical and bad things having to do with just about everything else'.
The move is something first considered by his predecessor Joe Biden, though his government ultimately ended up not going through with it, and Politico notes that Trump has some strongly anti-cannabis people in senior positions in his government.
Which way Trump will decide is up to him and he has a reputation for changing his mind so it's tricky to put much stock in what he says until it's actually written down into law.
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The states where cannabis is already legal
Cannabis is already legal for both medical and recreational use in 24 US states, though the amount you can have varies depending on the law.
The states which say it's legal to own an amount of cannabis are:
- Alaska
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Illinois
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- Ohio
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
It's usually not a huge amount, but it's legal.
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All of these states, besides New Jersey and Delaware, also permit people to grow a limited amount of cannabis for their own use.
Medically legal, but not recreational
Plenty of other US states allow the use of cannabis for medical reasons but not recreational. They let you use some for medical purposes, which really flies in the face of cannabis being a Schedule I drug which is for substances that have 'no currently accepted medical use'.
If that was the case then 40 out of 50 US states wouldn't have made it legal for just such a purpose.
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The medically legal but not recreational states are:
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- Nebraska
- New Hampshire
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Utah
- West Virginia
In many of these states even if it's not legal to use cannabis for recreational purposes, the drug is either decriminalised without being explicitly legal or there are caveats where people caught will be put under a 'cite and release' where a person is not arrested.
According to VT, Hawaii and Pennsylvania have both been toying with recreational legislation.
The states where cannabis is still illegal
While North Carolina has the drug decriminalised for slight use recreationally, it still see cannabis as illegal, as does:
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Even in some cities the drug is decriminalised, though it remains illegal elsewhere.
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That's not to say you can't get cannabis-related products as CBD oil is still available at varying strengths for medicinal reasons, but if the needle is going to move significantly anywhere in the US on cannabis legalisation it's here.
While the federal government, and by extension Donald Trump, get to set how drugs are classified it's up to the states to decided how to punish offenders they catch and across the US the law is all over the place.
Topics: Donald Trump, US News, Drugs, Crime
Joe Harker