In summary
While uncertainty mounts over how the Trump administration will handle legal marijuana in California, a group of Democratic state lawmakers are pushing a bill that would prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in investigating state-licensed pot growers and sellers.
While uncertainty mounts over how the Trump administration will handle legal marijuana in California, a group of Democratic state lawmakers are pushing a bill that would prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in investigating state-licensed pot growers and sellers.
With language reminiscent of controversial “sanctuary state” immigration legislation, AB 1578 would bar California police, sheriffs, and other state and local agencies from using their resources to assist a federal agency in investigating, detaining, reporting or arresting Californians for marijuana-related activity permitted under state law. Californians voted to legalize recreational marijuana use and sale last November.
Some California law enforcement groups have criticized the bill as an example of state overreach.
“(Growing and selling marijuana) is still a federal felony and we are still in the United States of America, and the state of California cannot take over the United States,” Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, told the Los Angeles Times.
The bill, authored by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer of Los Angeles and co-sponsored by several Bay Area Democrats, heads to the Assembly Committee on Public Safety next month.