Legal weed is at a crossroads.

While some cannabis legalization proponents claim their movement has grown too big to fail, it has also proved too significant for the federal government to ignore.

The Trump administration is mulling its approach to the state-regulated systems that conflict with federal law. On Capitol Hill, conversations about legal cannabis have picked up steam.

Amid a time of unknowns surrounding federal marijuana policy, one thing is certain: The status quo is no longer sustainable.

State-legal marijuana is a multibillion-dollar business with varied regulations and no firm banking and taxation rules. Regulated sales of cannabis have trended favorably among the American public, but high-ranking federal officials have questioned the effects legal marijuana programs have on public health and safety.

“This whole situation is untenable,” said Zachary Bolitho, a former federal prosecutor who now is a professor for the Campbell University School of Law in Raleigh, N.C. “It cannot continue the way that it is.

“Something’s going to have to give at some point.”

 

Read the entire story in The Cannabist.