About last week …

Just last week, you said the Trump administration would be too busy suppressing voting rights to spend any time going after cannabis users. I just saw Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer saying they were gonna go after the recreational market. What gives?

—Khan Phused

Welcome to the Trump administration! No one knows what is going to happen; they will probably say something completely different next week. This administration seems to be allergic to facts.

Spicer tried to tie legal cannabis use to the rise in deaths from opiate use, stating “When you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming around so many states … the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people.” Spicer has apparently chosen to disregard studies showing that states that allow either medical or recreational use have seen a 25 percent decrease in cannabis opiate related overdoses. The old “cannabis is a gateway drug to heroin” story has been debunked time and time again; just last week, under pressure from Americans for Safe Access, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s website removed a document filled with such myths.

Spicer’s statement shows either incompetence, ignorance or both. And don’t get me started on his hypocritical “transgender rights should be left to the states, but weed is a federal issue” bullshit.

As to what could happen, who knows? If President Donald Trump’s regime is really interested in going after the recreational market, it faces an extremely difficult battle. California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Nevada, Colorado, Maine and Alaska all allow for recreational adult use of cannabis. Is the DEA really ready to go after legitimate business owners in eight different states? Think about how many rich whites dudes have recently gotten involved in the legal cannabis game. You really think the DEA is gonna try and put rich people into all these private prisons? Probably not.

Also, if the plan is to go after recreational use while leaving the medical cannabis alone, California is good to go. We’ve had medical marijuana laws on the books since 1996. The Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act is well on its way to creating robust and comprehensive regulations.

Plus, the California Legislature may even help us out. One of the 44 cannabis related bills introduced this session is Assembly Bill 1578, which would “prohibit a state or local agency from using resources to assist a federal agency to investigate, detain, detect, report or arrest a person for commercial or noncommercial marijuana or medical cannabis activity that is authorized by law in the State of California.”

You are reading that correctly: Some California lawmakers want to keep local law enforcement from snitching to the feds. Gotta love it. Call your representatives and tell them to support AB 1578.

The California cannabis industry has faced bigger battles. Weed is way more popular than Trump, and Califonia is still full of outlaws. We will be fine.