Why 2019 Could Be Marijuana’s Biggest Year Yet

On November 7, the day after Democrats seized control of the House with what would become a 40-seat swing, President Trump fired his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. That day, at his home in California, Smoke Wallin’s phone blew up with congratulatory calls from friends and associates celebrating the political demise of the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Sessions had spent good parts of the preceding two years looming menacingly over a booming industry that is caught between a tidal wave of popularity at the state level and an implacable wall of illegality in Washington. Wallin, the president of Vertical, a cannabis company with a 1,500-acre ranch outside of Santa Barbara and operations in four states, was not unmoved by Sessions’ departure, but he saw an even more welcome development in the election results.

“People kept saying that with Sessions no longer attorney general, a major obstacle was removed from the cannabis movement’s progress,” Wallin told POLITICO Magazine. “I had to remind them that Jeff Sessions was not really the major problem. He had been all bluster and no action.” Instead, Wallin was focused on the departure of another Sessions — the all-powerful chairman of the House Rules Committee. [Read more at Politico]