With President’s Signature, $1.3-Trillion Budget Bill Continues Medical Marijuana Protections

After a frenzied back-and-forth debate with members of Congress, President Donald Trump signed a $1.3-trillion spending bill into law today. The bill includes ongoing protections for state-legal medical marijuana business owners and patients.

Contained within this spending measure, once again, is the 2014 Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment, which blocks federal funds from being spent to interfere with programs or prosecute people associated with medical marijuana in states that have legalized the medicinal use of the plant.

While the U.S. government has approved several short-term spending bills in recent months, this latest bill will fund the government through September. Trump had threatened a veto, insisting that lawmakers had not adequately addressed the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipient “Dreamers” and the funding mechanism of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president relented, he said, because the federal government needed access to the bill’s increased military appropriations.

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