Sunday marks 420, a semi-official “hangover holiday” celebrated by cannabis enthusiasts everywhere ― but not, perhaps, in the White House.
HuffPost reached out to see if Donald Trump and his administration had any plans to officially honor 420, but received no immediate response.
Trump’s own views on the wacky weed seem to go both ways: On one hand, he upheld federal prohibition of cannabis during his first term in office and has also suggested that drug dealers should get the death penalty.
On the other hand, Trump didn’t go after states with legal cannabis laws during his first term. Also, in 2024, he supported a Florida ballot measure that would legalize recreational marijuana in the state.
As a result, though fears abound that the president is screwing up the global economy, many people in the bud biz are cautiously optimistic that their businesses won’t get burned.
Raul Molina, the co-founder and COO of Mint Cannabis, which runs cannabis dispensaries in many states, said he’s not sure the Trump administration can do anything to stop industry growth.
“The industry is too large for rollbacks at this point,” Molina told HuffPost, though he said he doubts anything positive will happen, either. “That said, we do not expect further gains under this administration. However, you never know. We will keep pushing!”
Paula Savchenko, a lawyer specializing in regulated substances, agrees that Trump will likely leave cannabis legalization to the states, but told HuffPost that “cannabis policy does not appear to be a priority for President Trump or many of his appointed officials, several of whom have historically maintained anti-cannabis positions throughout their careers.”
Although Trump’s potential inclination to leave cannabis a states’ rights issue may help the indica industry, his stance on tariffs is having a negative effect, according to Barron Lutz of Nasha Hash, a cannabis company in Humboldt County, California.
“Tariffs are the biggest issue right now, especially for packaging and hardware,” Lutz told HuffPost, noting that vapes are the most likely products he sells to suffer price increases since the hardware is entirely made in China.
“If those costs double or triple, it’ll hit that category hard,” he admitted.
Still, Nishant Reddy, the CEO and founder of A Golden State, a California-based cannabis company, said that going after the cannabis industry could be bad business for Trump.
“In a presidency focused on stimulating the American economy and American jobs, it would be counterproductive to stifle a truly 100% American industry—one that cannot legally export, and whose profits, taxes, jobs, etc., all benefit America and Americans,” Reddy told HuffPost.
But Derek Chase of Flora + Bast, a company specializing in psychoactive substances, believes that Trump could become a big cannabis convert ― at least from a revenue-raising standpoint.
“Trump wanting to reduce income tax could spur him to move faster towards federal legalization, as cannabis is a large market with frothy tax levels,” Chase told HuffPost. “So while I don’t believe him to want to do anything specific with cannabis, it may just turn out that he sees it as a way to make more money for the government,” he said, adding that the substance’s “low risk profile” makes it “so non-noxious compared to alcohol.”
Although the Trump administration hasn’t announced plans to go after legal cannabis, MacKenzie McClain Hill, founder of LumiBloom, a CBD health brand, said that it’s important for people to remember the people most likely to be hurt if it does.
“There’s always a concern when progress is politicized,” she told HuffPost. “Any rollback would hit hardest in communities that have already been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs. As a woman of color leading a CBD brand, I know how fragile these gains can be ― and how urgent it is to protect them.”