It’s finally happening — Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rescinded the 2013 Cole Memo regarding federal enforcement in states that legalized cannabis. The Cole Memo, which came on the heels of marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington back in 2012, set forth the Obama administration’s enforcement policies regarding state-legal marijuana.
It set out eight main enforcement directives that essentially allowed states to move forward with legalization so long as they had “robust” regulations to control undesirable side effects. In turn, cannabis operators who consistently complied with hardcore state marijuana regulations basically saw themselves as off-limits to the Feds because of the Cole Memo. Nonetheless, the Cole Memo did not legalize or decriminalize marijuana and marijuana remains federally illegal today.
With this imminent shift in enforcement policies from the Department of Justice (DOJ), the question now becomes what will future DOJ enforcement look like?
Where the Cole Memo basically relinquished marijuana enforcement to the states under certain conditions, rescission of the Cole Memo likely will mean that federal prosecutors in cannabis legal states will now be free to decide how aggressively they wish to enforce federal marijuana laws. This means that a U.S. attorney’s views on cannabis in a state where cannabis is legal will be critically important. It, therefore, behooves you — now more than ever — to familiarize yourself with the stances your particular U.S. attorney has regarding cannabis.
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Though we do not foresee a return to high-level and consistent federal enforcement against cannabis — the DOJ lacks money and manpower to prosecute everyone — individual prosecutors may soon have sufficient means to target certain operators that get on their radar. Most U.S. attorneys though (especially in the leading cannabis legal states) will see going after cannabis as political suicide and view themselves as having bigger fish to fry.
There will, however, likely be a ripple effect from this news. Namely, current access to banking, any tax reform progress, and investment are going to feel the chill of uncertainty and the threat of federal enforcement. Banks are only banking the cannabis industry because of a set of FinCEN guidelines from 2014 (and another DOJ memo on marijuana banking) that hinged on the Cole Memo. Banks are incredibly conservative and taking down the Cole Memo will almost certainly lead some banks to stop providing banking services to cannabis businesses. Institutional investors do not like this kind of uncertainty and we fear this will lead to a slowdown in cannabis investments, at least until we see how U.S. prosecutors handle the new enforcement protocol.
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And what about the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment? It’s still in play as valid federal law until January 19th, when it comes up for renewal. Be mindful though that the amendment applies only to states with medical cannabis; it does not provide any protection to adult use marijuana operators. Plus, that amendment has only served to protect medical cannabis operators in the 9th circuit based only on the McIntosh case.
Sessions’ move will increase confusion for both U.S. attorneys and states, but I have been representing cannabis businesses in California and Washington for eight years now and I am confident that western States like California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington are not going to back down in the face of Jeff Sessions’ overzealous pursuit of his personal war on marijuana. Indeed, these (and other) states’ positions may ultimately speed up bonafide legal challenges that finally call into question in a real way the constitutionality of marijuana’s current scheduling and states’ rights to legalize and be left alone.
Stay tuned.
Hilary Bricken is an attorney at Harris Bricken, a law firm with lawyers in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Beijing. This story was originally published on the Canna Law Blog.
