The latest bill to legalize cannabis at the federal level is the first to be introduced to the 116th Congress, which opened at the start of the year under new Democratic House leadership. The odds for its passage look better than for previous such efforts.<\/p>\n
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0the bill Jan. 9 \u2014 numbered HR 420, in an\u00a0inside joke<\/a>\u00a0for cannabis aficionados. Its full title is the \u201cRegulate Marijuana like Alcohol Act,\u201d and it would remove cannabis from the controlled substances list altogether. This would separate cannabis from the \u201cschedule\u201d system established by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, and lay the groundwork for a legal industry. Responsibility for regulating cannabis would be switched from the\u00a0Drug Enforcement Administration\u00a0to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the bill number may be a bit tongue-in-cheek, the issue is very serious,\u201d Blumenauer told his home state\u2019s\u00a0Willamette Week<\/a>. \u201cOur federal marijuana laws are outdated, out of touch and have negatively impacted countless lives. Congress cannot continue to be out of touch with a movement that a growing majority of Americans support. It\u2019s time to end this senseless prohibition.\u201d<\/p>\n On the same day that the bill was introduced, Blumenauer also\u00a0announced new members<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Congressional Cannabis Caucus<\/a>, of which he is a chair. The Caucus will now be co-chaired by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Don Young (R-AK). Two of the founding co-chairs have since departed Congress \u2014 Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) lost his re-election bid in November, while Jared Polis (D-CO) was\u00a0elected governor of Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n Legalization efforts have been\u00a0held up before<\/a>\u00a0by the Republican congressional leadership. The 115th Congress\u2019 GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is actually the one who shepherded through the federal Farm Bill\u00a0passed at the end of 2018<\/a>, which legalizes industrial hemp and hemp-derived CBD. But he was always intransigent on drawing a sharp line between\u00a0industrial hemp and marijuana<\/a>. \u201cIt is a different plant,\u201d he\u00a0told reporters<\/a>\u00a0last year when the Farm Bill was pending. \u201cIt has an illicit cousin which I choose not to embrace.\u201d<\/p>\n On the House side, the Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has been replaced California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who has by no means been a leader on the cannabis question, but may yet represent progress. According to\u00a0Marijuana Moment<\/a>, Pelosi has \u201ccosponsored a number of marijuana bills in the 1990s and early 2000s \u2014 including several to protect states that legalized medical cannabis from federal interference \u2014 but she hasn\u2019t signed her name onto a single piece of standalone marijuana legislation over the past 17 years.\u201d<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Daily Beast<\/a>\u00a0notes, when asked about cannabis legalization following her election as House majority leader last month, she responded somewhat equivocally: \u201cI\u2019ve supported these initiatives in my home state of California, so we\u2019ll see what\u2019s possible.\u201d She did publicly support California\u2019s 2016 legalization initiative.<\/p>\n But despite Pelosi\u2019s apparent ambivalence, congressional legalization efforts have become more far-reaching over the past few years. Last year, Sen. Cory Booker (D \u2013 NJ)\u00a0sponsored<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Marijuana Justice Act<\/a>, which would not only have removed cannabis from the controlled substances list but also contained measures to address the social injustices of prohibition. It would have withheld federal funds from states that disproportionately arrest or incarcerate low-income people or racial minorities for cannabis offenses, and required federal courts to expunge the records of those with prior convictions for use or possession.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act<\/a>, actually\u00a0sponsored<\/a>\u00a0by then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last year, would also have removed cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, and likewise included measures for expungement of prior convictions.<\/p>\n Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) last year introduced a less ambitious piece of legislation, the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States Act, or simply the\u00a0STATES Act<\/a>, to remove the threat of federal intervention and prosecution in states that have legalized. It would have created an exemption from the Controlled Substances Act without actually descheduling cannabis. A House companion bill was introduced by Blumenauer and Rep. David Joyce (R-OH).<\/p>\n In 2017, the\u00a0Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act<\/a>, sponsored by Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA), did seek to deschedule cannabis, reviving an effort\u00a0first launched<\/a>\u00a0in the Senate by Vermont\u2019s independent Bernie Sanders in 2015.<\/p>\n Of course, any hopes for passage of this latest effort could be dashed either by intransigence in the Republican-controlled Senate or by a Trump veto. While Trump has talked out of both sides of his mouth on the cannabis question, he\u2019s\u00a0tilted in a hardline<\/span><\/a>\u00a0direction as president, giving little reason for optimism. And a veto override would, of course, be a much tougher prospect. Nonetheless, HR 420 signals growing acceptance of the once-taboo notion of cannabis legalization, giving a sense that the long arc of history in inevitably bending toward justice.<\/span><\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think cannabis will be descheduled before the end of 2019?<\/p>\n The post HR 420, a Bill to Deschedule Cannabis, Has a Decent Chance of Passing This Year<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The latest bill to legalize cannabis at the federal level is the first to be introduced to the 116th Congress, which opened at the start of the year under new Democratic House leadership. The odds for its passage look better than for previous such efforts. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)\u00a0introduced\u00a0the billContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,1348,1074,7155,7156,4154,5014,7157,1136,3823,3092,7158,81,7159,7160,5245],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32199"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32200,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32199\/revisions\/32200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New Hope Under New Leadership<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: HR 420, a Bill to Deschedule Cannabis, Has a Decent Chance of Passing This Year<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"