Giving Trump A Marijuana Business License Would Help Convince Him To Back Legalization, Democratic Senator Says
As she works to find Republican colleagues to join her in the push for federal marijuana legalization, a Democratic senator has a “theory” about how to get President Donald Trump on board: Give him a cannabis business license so he can “make a ton of money.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) discussed her plans to advance marijuana reform—and the challenges of finding GOP leaders who are aligned with the majority of Americans on the issue—during an event organized and hosted by Cultivated on Thursday.
The senator stressed that she needs “a Republican leader to help me” move forward with descheduling, but stigma prevails among the GOP caucus on Capitol Hill, complicating the pathway to reform, which also includes more incremental proposals to ease marijuana industry banking and stock exchange access, for example.
Gillibrand also said she needs “President Trump to want to do cannabis,” and she said it isn’t outside the realm of possibilities given his record of shifting positions on various policy issues such as cryptocurrency.
“If I could get him convinced it was a great business,” that could move the needle, she said, joking that one way to get Trump on board with legalization would be to “offer him a cannabis license for New York so that he can make a ton of money, and then he will be for this industry.”
“I don’t know. That’s just one theory: Offer President Trump a cannabis license. It’ll work,” the senator said at the event. “Money talks. He’s a businessman first.”
In Congress, Gillibrand said she’s seeking a GOP leader to “help me do the deregulation legislation,” and her staff “has been reaching out to many of the senators who are from states that already have either recreational use or medical use, and we’re just not getting the leadership that we need. ”
“So I’m still working on that, but I think the biggest impediment is that we’ve not had presidential leadership in 20 years on this. It’s been very frustrating that, even under Democrat and Republican administrations, nobody wants to deschedule cannabis,” she said. “If any president decided to deschedule cannabis, it would get done. And so that’s been our biggest impediment, and I’ve been disappointed in both Democrats and Republicans consistently.”
Former President Joe Biden initiated a process to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), she noted, and Trump has since signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to expeditiously complete that process. But that’s yet to come to fruition—and the Justice Department told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday that it had no “comment or updates” on the status of that rulemaking.
Gillibrand reiterated that, “again, it should be moving us to full descheduling,” not simply rescheduling. Moving cannabis to Schedule III would not end federal prohibition, though it would let state-legal marijuana businesses take federal tax deductions, loosen certain research restrictions and symbolically recognize the plant’s medical value.
“I’m going to work with whatever Republican leaders I could find to create a bipartisan and bicameral piece of legislation to fully deschedule it, and also to open up the markets so that people can have access to the stock exchanges, access to capital, access to the financial services industry—even as a half-measure,” the senator said. “If I could get that financial services bill done and then work on descheduling, I would do that as well. So I’m going to keep looking for partners, and I think that is the biggest holdup we’ve had so far.”
“If I could find some Republican leaders who want to do this, we could try to get a vote, try to create advocacy so that community that wants full descheduling of cannabis can be heard,” she said. “We could do press conferences. We could create a drumbeat. That’s how you typically get things done. You have to change the weather. You have to make sure that people begin to realize this is a piece of legislation that needs to move, and my biggest impediment is a Dem-only bill just doesn’t get us there because we don’t control the House and the Senate.”
Gillibrand added that she’s “fighting to flip the Senate” as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee “to win some more Republican states and flip them blue so I have better allies in doing the work to decriminalize and to make cannabis available in all 50 states.”
Whether its descheduling or industry access to financial services, “I need a strong leader,” she said. “We have pitched this to several senators who come from states that either have full have medical use, but also those who have recreational use, and so far we’ve not gotten a taker yet.”
“So we just need to keep raising this to the people, because the people can convince their representatives to support our bill and to support our ideas,” Gillibrand said. “It’s making it much more of a debated issue. I’d like it to be debated in these Senate races. I’d like it be debated in the next presidential campaign. I think it has to be on the forefront of stakeholders’ and elected leaders’ minds that they have to answer to their constituents on it.”
“The Republican Party has just not been pro-cannabis lately. We used to have some senators. We had a Republican senator out of Colorado who was very helpful on this. There were pockets of Republicans who were willing to help us that are not no longer in the Senate. So just don’t have a lead Republican who thinks this is important for his or her state, and that’s a huge problem. So we need to somehow create the drumbeat so that people understand that their senators have to be supportive of what their states want.”
“At its core, this conversation is about the future of our country’s economy, the health, the social equity and public safety. The American people have made themselves clear: Most of Americans support full legalization at the federal level,” she said. “Unfortunately, Washington is always behind the eight ball and continues to drag their feet—and getting anything done to do this one thing, unfortunately, Washington has been unwilling to do the work that’s necessary. It’s creating confusion and disparities across all levels of government, as well as for our small businesses and our entrepreneurs and Americans in general.”
“Too many members of Congress focus on cannabis as a gateway drug, as opposed to a cure, or as opposed to something that adults can enjoy across the country,” she continued. “And so it’s been very frustrating that we have not really gotten rid of the stigma still associated with cannabis.”
“The current administration’s executive order to move marijuana from Schedule I to III is obviously a positive step in the right direction. It’s not sufficient. However, it acknowledges what we know: That it is not the same category as of drugs like heroin and other Schedule I drugs,” Gillibrand said. “But obviously it’s not enough. So I’m going to do everything I can to continue this march towards full descheduling, full legalization, in all 50 states—to have a federal law and to have a federal standard.”
“I think it would make all the difference in the world for our stakeholders, for our consumers, for our patients and for the people who really need access to this industry and access to these products,” she said.
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Meanwhile, the White House recently touted the president’s executive order on rescheduling as an example of a policy achievement during the first year of his second term.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Trump’s first pick for attorney general this term who ultimately withdrew his nomination, raised eyebrows on Wednesday after posting on X that he’s been told the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is actively drafting a rescheduling rule and intended to issue it “ASAP.”
There’s some confusion around that point, however, as a rule is already pending before the Justice Department—and a new rule would presumably be subject to additional administrative review and public comment.
A Democratic senator told Marijuana Moment earlier this month that it’s “too early to tell” what the implications of Trump’s cannabis order would be—saying that while there are “things that look promising” about it, he is “very concerned about where the DOJ will land.”
“The ability of the Trump administration to speak out of both sides of their mouth is staggering,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said. “So I’m just going to wait and see right now. Obviously, there’s things that look promising—to end generations of injustice. I really want to wait and see.”
Also this month, two GOP senators filed an amendment to block the Trump administration from rescheduling cannabis, but it was not considered on the floor.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, DEA said the cannabis rescheduling appeal process “remains pending” despite Trump’s executive order.
A recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report discussed how DOJ could, in theory, reject the president’s directive or delay the process by restarting the scientific review into marijuana.
Bondi, the attorney general, separately missed a congressionally mandated deadline this month to issue guidelines for easing barriers to research on Schedule I substances such as marijuana and psychedelics.
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