Biden’s choice to lead the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to be more favorable to the industry after four years of Jeff Sessions and William Barr, appointees of President Donald Trump who were both hostile toward marijuana.
Sessions rescinded the Cole memo, an Obama-era policy protecting state-legal marijuana businesses from federal prosecution.
While that move rattled marijuana executives, the U.S. Department of Justice under Sessions remained mostly indifferent to the industry.
Barr pledged a hands-off policy toward state-legal marijuana businesses but then ordered politically motivated antitrust reviews of 10 proposed cannabis mergers, according to a federal prosecutor’s congressional testimony in June.