Prison is not a happy or good place and too many Americans live there. This is not a particularly strong take, nor is it an original observation. It is significant, however, that enough American lawmakers who identify (and vote) as conservative have adopted enough of this reasonable worldview for Congress to pass the First Step Act, a criminal-justice reform bill championed by President Donald Trump and first son-in-law Jared Kushner that eases some drug-related sentencing guidelines and will lead to the early release of some federal prison inmates.<\/p>\n
What at least one expert called the \u201clargest federal effort to reduce prison populations ever\u201d<\/a>\u00a0would probably be bigger news if it weren\u2019t lost in a sea of government shutdowns, troop withdrawals and critiques of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, but so it goes with the 45th president. The First Step Act would likely have been bigger news if it did anything to reform American marijuana policy, which at the federal level is every day more of step with the states.<\/p>\n But the First Step Act does not do that. It would have, had\u00a0a last-minute effort<\/a>\u00a0by Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner to tack on protections for state-legal marijuana operations from federal prosecution and lift restrictions on state-legal marijuana businesses to use banks succeeded.<\/p>\n It might always have been too big of a lift: Earlier efforts by Gardner and his bipartisan co-sponsors to get the\u00a0STATES Act<\/a>\u00a0through the Senate failed. And \u201cthanks\u201d to his colleagues Mitch McConnell \u2014 the same Mitch McConnell who\u00a0produced a \u201chemp pen\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to sign the Farm Bill into law \u2014 and Chuck Grassley, who sneered at banking protections and federal prosecution protections as a \u201cback door to legalization,\u201d Gardner did not succeed at this, either.<\/p>\n The Senate did not allow the marijuana protections to be added to the First Step Act, one of the last bills passed by Congress in its lame duck session (and before all of its attention veered to the government shutdown over border wall funding). And so meaningful federal marijuana legislation will have to wait for the incoming Congress, where, in what might be a sign of good marijuana policy to come, Democrats will run the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n Will Trump sign pro-marijuana legislation to emerge from under future Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s gavel? According to Gardner, sure. The Denver Post reported that Gardner\u2019s people believe that Trump \u201csupports the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump might yet come around to such an idea, but consider: The STATES Act is not just Gardner\u2019s, but also Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren\u2019s. Warren and Trump, recall, are not exactly friendly, and inasmuch as Trump likes to win (and reasonable marijuana reforms would be popular, and a win) he also very much likes it when his bete noirs lose.<\/p>\n What else might guarantee its passage in the next term? A better sponsor, a better argument, less power for Grassley or for McConnell? Grassley has for years been a reliable roadblock for marijuana reform while serving on key committees in the Senate. The best hope may be someone like Pelosi, who has shown her willingness to engage with the president and her mettle to hold her own when she does.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think Trump will adopt marijuana reforms?<\/p>\n The post Marijuana Reforms Left Out of Trump\u2019s Criminal Justice Reform Bill<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Prison is not a happy or good place and too many Americans live there. This is not a particularly strong take, nor is it an original observation. It is significant, however, that enough American lawmakers who identify (and vote) as conservative have adopted enough of this reasonable worldview for CongressContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,83,6923,4154,4037,6924,119,4013,5245],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31769,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31768\/revisions\/31769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Marijuana Reforms Left Out of Trump\u2019s Criminal Justice Reform Bill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"