Thor Benson / Cannabis News Box Contributor

California has been doing its best to lead the resistance against Trump, and it seems cannabis is the latest area lawmakers in the state are focusing on.

While Attorney General Jeff Sessions rails against legalization and medical cannabis, California’s legislature passed a joint resolution (no pun intended) on September 21 asking the federal government to reschedule cannabis so medical research can proceed unencumbered.

“The Legislature urges the Congress of the United States to pass a law to reschedule marijuana or cannabis and its derivatives from a Schedule I drug to an alternative schedule, therefore allowing the legal research and development of marijuana or cannabis for medical use,” the resolution says.

As you likely know, cannabis is currently a Schedule I drug, which means the federal government says it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” according to the DEA. There are more barriers in the way for researchers who want to study Schedule I drugs, so if cannabis was reclassified as a Schedule II or III drug, that would help expand cannabis research.

“California is an influential state on this issue, especially because its Congressional delegation makes up more than a tenth of the entire U.S. House,” Tom Angell, founder of Marijuana Majority, told Cannabis News Box. “It’s long past time for marijuana to be move out of a classification that pretends — in contravention of science and majority of states — that cannabis has no medical value.”

The resolution also calls on the federal government to change tax and banking laws so that cannabis businesses can more easily and more safely operate in states that have legalized cannabis. Since banks are federally regulated, most of them won’t work with cannabis businesses while cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, so those businesses are forced to do all business in cash. That can lead to robberies and other issues. Cannabis businesses also get heavily taxed because of outdated and confusing tax policies.

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom’s office forwarded Cannabis News Box a copy of a letter Newsom sent to Trump in February asking for him to leave states that have legalized cannabis alone and support a “legal and tightly regulated marijuana marketplace.”

“We have a shared goal of reducing crime, and the best way we can achieve that is through a tightly regulated market,” Newsom wrote. It appears a lot of lawmakers in California are putting pressure on Trump when it comes to cannabis.