For the cannabis movement, the ultimate policy goals are federal adult-use legalization and insurance coverage for cannabis used to treat qualifying medical conditions. The presidential election in November will decide whether or not those policy goals move forward anytime soon because, as those involved in politics say, personnel is policy.
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A thorough vibe check of the cannabis scene suggests that there is some degree of genuine support within it for Donald Trump’s third presidential bid. Everybody is aware of the dismal track record that the federal government has on cannabis policy, so perhaps that is why installing as dictator-in-waiting a convicted felon who has well-documented ties to organized crime appeals to some within the movement. Legislating is hard. It sure would be easier to legalize weed if a king could just bellow down an order from above that everybody would obey.
The reason why things won’t play out like that is because, again, personnel is policy. While Trump does indeed have an unquenchable thirst for absolute power over every American, returning him to power in November would not on its own invalidate the United States’ successful experiment with democracy or end the rule of law. What it would do is one step removed from that. It would give Trump the power to install an army of loyalists to help him replace democracy with the kleptocratic dictatorship they have in mind.
That army of loyalists would be his personnel, and their beliefs and desires, not Trump’s, would set the real policy agenda. And it is widely known exactly what those beliefs and desires are because the personnel wrote it all down and published it.
It’s called Project 2025. It would invalidate all progress that’s been made to date on cannabis policy and end any hope of common-sense reform that benefits both consumers and cannabis businesses.
Published last year by the Heritage Foundation, the powerful Republican mouthpiece, Project 2025 is a blueprint for curtailing individual rights, eradicating freedoms, and further concentrating wealth and power among those who already have the most. It is systematic and methodical—it is clear that its authors put forth considerable effort to explore exactly how they would use political power to dismantle U.S. democracy from the inside.
Project 2025 is more than 350,000 words long. Longer than Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It is also rich with policy details of the regressive variety. No organization spends that much time and that many resources drawing up such a detailed playbook unless they intend to use it on day one. So, credit to Heritage for the transparency. At least they’re finally saying the quiet parts out loud.
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Project 2025 is best summarized as the far right’s fever dream. It would ban reproductive healthcare by selectively restricting access. It would exploit workers by gutting labor regulations. It would transfer yet more wealth from working-class people to billionaires.
Think these policies don’t affect cannabis? Think again. The main justification for the policy goals of the cannabis movement boils down to an inherent right to bodily autonomy. The federal government should not continue to prohibit the consumption of a plant that comes out of the ground, and it should not put itself in between doctors and their patients on matters of care.
In denying the right to reproductive healthcare, Project 2025 is necessarily hostile to the right to bodily autonomy. The same men who would ban abortion would selectively enforce laws against cannabis consumption. The same theocrats who would deny the right of trans persons to exist would also deny one’s right to use cannabis.
Under Project 2025, the federal government would use anti-cannabis laws to exert power and control, selectively and vindictively, over peoples’ bodies. That control isn’t some accidental byproduct of policies that have a legitimate purpose. The control is the entire point.
An example: Project 2025 would use federal power to promote a Christian Nationalist ideology. An actual quote from it reads, “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest, and until very recently, the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day.” Making it illegal to do yard work on Sundays is, indeed, a very weird policy. But the underlying threat, one that would transfer liberties and freedoms from the individual to a theocratic government, is much more direct and sinister. To this day, religious fundamentalism remains a major driver of discrimination, hate—and, yes, selective enforcement against cannabis users.
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Explicit anti-cannabis policy is littered throughout Project 2025, and it isn’t only earmarked for the morality police. On page 285, it calls for increased prosecution of “interstate drug activity.” On page 553, it calls for the prosecution of district attorneys for “refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions.” There are no exceptions for cannabis use in either section, regardless of state laws permitting its use.
It also calls for the feds to “aggressively deploy the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO),” which has been used in the past to prosecute state-legal cannabis businesses.
Project 2025 does not contain carve-outs for existing state-legal cannabis markets, ostensibly because such carve-outs are not part of the plan. It unequivocally does not lay out a path for federal cannabis legalization, despite legalization’s overwhelming popularity among Americans, or restorative justice for victims of unfair prosecution—because the entire point of it is to facilitate the selective enforcement of draconian laws against perceived adversaries.
In fact, Project 2025 calls for more state-sanctioned executions “where appropriate and applicable.” Trump has expressed support for punishing “drug dealers” with the death penalty—and under U.S. law, any cannabis business owner who produces $20m or 60,000 kilograms of cannabis does, in fact, qualify for the death penalty. While it’s tough to imagine that actually happening, the fact is that the plan encourages the use of these laws as they are currently constructed. It’s in there, on page 554.
While not drug policy specifically, Project 2025 would also concentrate the full power of the federal government in a Republican presidency by replacing many thousands of government employees with political loyalists committed to enacting a regressive vision for America.
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This concept, to turn the federal administrative workforce into a band of enforcement goons, is the main lever of power expressed in Project 2025. Trump tried to do this at the end of his first term, as evidenced by the Schedule F executive order he signed in October 2020, but that order had little practical effect. That failure, more than anything else, seems to be the origin story of Project 2025. They had an opportunity to permanently seize power in 2016, but they sliced that drive right into the trees. Now, they want a mulligan.
I do not intend to normalize Trump’s increasingly alarming racism or his aggressive, transparent ignorance on matters of policy. These are already disqualifying on their own to many within the movement, regardless of partisan affiliations. Rather, I intend to invite those who think the two candidates are the same on cannabis to look into Project 2025 and reconsider that opinion.
Kamala Harris genuinely supports federal legalization, and that support has become a centerpiece of the campaign right when it matters most. The movement needs the opportunity to hold her accountable for these promises because that’s the most direct path to reform.
Trump, by contrast, will die in prison unless he regains the powers of the presidency, and he will say or do anything to avoid the accountability that awaits him.
Weeks ahead of any election, it is articulating the stakes, not the horse race, that matters most. And in this election, the stakes couldn’t be higher. A vote for Trump is a vote for Project 2025, and a vote for Harris is a vote for the most pro-cannabis presidential ticket in modern U.S. history. Act accordingly.
*This op-ed was submitted by a guest contributor. The author is solely responsible for its contents.