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Forbes Daily Briefing

Meet The Cannabis Industry’s Trump Whisperer

Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

News, Business, Tech News

4.418 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2026

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kim Rivers, CEO of Florida-based Trulieve, was instrumental in getting the president to issue an executive order to reschedule marijuana. Now she is trying to build her $1.2 billion company into the Starbucks of weed. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2026/04/17/meet-trulieve-ceo-kim-rivers-the-cannabis-industrys-trump-whisperer/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:23.4

Today on Forbes, meet the cannabis industry's Trump Whisperer.

0:30.0

For the fifth annual Cannabis 42.0 list, which was released last week,

0:35.7

Forbes is celebrating the entrepreneurs, innovators, and disruptors

0:39.4

who are finding success in the state-regulated cannabis market in spite of federal headwinds.

0:45.4

One member of the list is Kim Rivers, the CEO and chairman of the Florida-based

0:51.0

cannabis giant, True Leave. On December 18, 2025, Rivers left the White House after President Donald Trump

0:59.3

signed an executive order directing then U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to reschedule

1:05.0

marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Rivers was instrumental in getting the president to

1:10.8

issue the executive order. For the last two years, Rivers was instrumental in getting the president to issue the executive order.

1:13.0

For the last two years, Rivers, who was 48 years old, along with Boston financier Howard Kessler,

1:20.1

and other business leaders and advocates, led a lobbying campaign to persuade President Trump,

1:25.7

a man who has famously never smoked or had a drink,

1:29.1

to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I substance, the same category as heroin and LSD,

1:35.9

to Schedule 3, alongside ketamine, steroids, and Tylenol with codeine.

1:42.3

Since 1970, when President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs,

1:47.2

marijuana has been banned under federal law.

1:50.8

It's not a done deal, but once the process is complete,

1:54.0

the rescheduling will be the most significant federal drug reform in nearly 60 years.

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