/>iIt’s the first week of January, and you all know what that means in the blogging game: It’s time to make wild predictions about the coming year. As always, making predictions is hard, particularly when they’re about the future. But here are a few of our thoughts about what the cannabis world may look like in 2025:
The Farm Bill Will Be Extended Until the Latter Half of 2025 But Done This Year
The 2018 Farm Bill was set to expire in September 2023 before it was extended to late 2024. It has been extended again until late 2025 — with no changes to the hemp provisions. While it is certainly possible that Congress could pass stand-alone legislation governing hemp, we suspect it will be more politically palatable to certain key members to have the hemp provisions included in the broader Farm Bill. And we don’t anticipate that broader legislation to be passed until the second half of the year.
The Farm Bill Will Clarify Cannabinoid Rules But Adopt a Regulate, Don’t Ban Approach to Many Existing Cannabinoids
Part of the reason we think it may be more politically expedient to address the hemp issues in a bigger piece of legislation is that there is going to be a hell of a fight between marijuana companies and hemp operators about whether – and if so with what new regulations – hemp operators will be permitted to manufacture and sale intoxicating hemp products. While we certainly understand why marijuana operators would prefer that such products be eliminated entirely by simply closing the “loophole” in the 2018 Farm Bill that allowed for the explosive proliferation of intoxicating hemp products in the past six years, our sources on the Hill suggest the revisions will be a compromise where many hemp operators will be allowed to continue but only under much more stringent rules that put them on a more equal footing with marijuana operators.
There Will Be Continued Rapid Developments in State Laws Governing Intoxicating Hemp Products
Assuming Congress isn’t going to act in the near term, we strongly suspect state legislatures – both in socially conservative states and in states with adult-use marijuana regimes – will continue the recent trend of more aggressively legislating and regulating on the question of intoxicating hemp products. Executive branch actions from California to Mississippi in the past few months show that states with dramatically different electorates are willing to wade into this issue.
Marijuana Will Not Be Formally Rescheduled in 2025
We know this will come as a disappointment to many marijuana reform advocates, but this one is just a question of timing and feasibility. The hearings before the administrative law judge have not started in substance, and those hearings will take some time. Then there will be a period of time when the judge prepares his ruling. Then there will be a period when the applicable federal agencies digest the judge’s findings and make a determination. We don’t think all of that will happen within the year, and that doesn’t include what is sure to be protracted litigation at every stage in the process.
Rescheduling very well may happen, and we suspect it will. But not this year.
President-Elect Trump’s Department of Justice Will Continue General Policy of Hands-Off State Marijuana Licensees in the Meantime
We’re normally not in the business of making predictions about what Donald Trump will do about anything, but we don’t see anything suggesting that a second Trump administration will differ in its approach to enforcement efforts against state marijuana licenses from his first administration until, at the earliest, marijuana is rescheduled. We just don’t think marijuana policy is an issue that occupies much of the president’s thoughts.
That said, if marijuana is rescheduled, look for a substantial push by some to attempt to use the Controlled Substances Act’s stringent provisions to push out operators who comply with state law but not federal law.
With Rescheduling a Possibility, Congress Will Choose Not to Focus on SAFE Banking Act or Reforming 280E
We anticipate many in Congress will place existing reform measures on the back burner as long as rescheduling continues to be seen as a likely outcome. After all, no need to reform 280E or banking if marijuana becomes Schedule III. We also believe it will be more difficult to get progressive marijuana proposals through a Republican-controlled Congress.
The United States Supreme Court Will Agree to Hear a Cannabis Case
We are certainly aware that, except in limited circumstances, the Supreme Court only hears the cases it chooses to hear and that the Court declines to hear the overwhelming majority of cases presented to it each year. But there are cases percolating in the lower courts that present issues that might interest SCOTUS either as a way of reshaping the scope of Congressional authority to regulate marijuana or to resolve a potential circuit split about the preemptive impact of the Farm Bill on state hemp law regulations. We think the Court may agree to hear the case in 2025 and then have oral arguments and a decision in 2026.
Conclusion
We’re fully prepared to eat a plate of crow with our black-eyed peas and greens next New Year’s. Surely not everything we predict will come to fruition in exactly the ways we have predicted here. But it’s a useful exercise for us in how we serve our clients – and we think a useful exercise for all cannabis stakeholders – to take the time to think long and hard about what the future holds for the industry so that they can make thoughtful decisions in the short-term while adjusting if necessary should those predictions not come true.
