Having cannabis removed from the federal list of controlled substances has long been the holy grail of legalization advocates. Several bills have now been introduced on Capitol Hill to do exactly that, but do any stand a chance of becoming law in the current polarized climate?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you need to know today about where cannabis is currently legal in the United States, what pathways to federal legalization are opening up and what the chances are that we\u2019ll see cannabis legalized in 2020.<\/p>\n
The feds have in practice mostly left cannabis enforcement to the states, who have been able to get away with writing their own laws around cannabis. And many states have now either generally legalized cannabis or legalized its use for medicinal purposes. Since Colorado and Washington led the way in 2012, a total of 11 states have now legalized for what is called the \u201cadult use\u201d or \u201crecreational\u201d market. Most have done so by popular referendum, but two \u2014 Vermont and Illinois \u2014 by acts of the state legislature.<\/p>\n
With medical marijuana, it\u2019s\u00a0a little complicated<\/a>. The short answer is that since California passed the nation\u2019s first medical cannabis law in 1996, a total of 33 states have passed medical marijuana laws (of widely varying degrees of leniency) either by legislation or referendum. But some of these states, including New York and Minnesota, only allow the use of extracts \u2014 not actual herbaceous cannabis. And several other states\u00a0have CBD-only laws<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 allowing the use of cannabidiol but not its intoxicating counterpart THC.\u00a0<\/p>\n So there is some ambiguity on what exactly constitutes a medical marijuana law.\u00a0<\/p>\n In any case, none of these laws override the federal prohibition of cannabis. Interstate and international trafficking are still policed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and federal law still poses myriad obstacles to the normalization of even state-legal cannabis businesses. Legal interstate commerce in cannabis, as has now been\u00a0called for by state law<\/a>\u00a0in Oregon and\u00a0at least broached<\/a>\u00a0by the governors of New York and Connecticut, will not be possible until federal law changes.<\/p>\n Cannabis remains a Schedule I substance under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act \u2014 the most restrictive category, absurdly shared with heroin. Among the several pending measures in Congress to change federal prohibition are some laws that failed to pass last year but were re-introduced in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Marijuana Justice Act was introduced in the House by Rep. Barbara Lee and in the Senate by Cory Booker. It has\u00a0won support<\/a>\u00a0from Rep. Carolyn Maloney of the\u00a0Congressional Cannabis Caucus<\/a>, which was established in 2017. In addition to descheduling, the bill would expunge all federal convictions for possessing or using cannabis.<\/p>\n Also introduced early this year by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, co-chair of the Cannabis Caucus, was the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act,\u00a0wryly dubbed HR 420<\/a>. Under this bill, responsibility for regulating cannabis would be switched from the Drug Enforcement Administration to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).\u00a0<\/p>\n Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also\u00a0reintroduced<\/a>\u00a0his Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act this spring. A somewhat more cautious bill, it would also deschedule cannabis, but would reserve federal power to prevent \u201ctrafficking\u201d to states that have not legalized \u2014 leaving a cannabis enforcement role for the DEA.\u00a0<\/p>\n Also reintroduced in the spring was the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act, which had been first\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0last year by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Gardner. A still less ambitious piece of legislation, it would create an exemption from the Controlled Substances Act for states that have legalized cannabis without actually descheduling the plant. The STATES Act would\u00a0also apply to Native American reservations<\/a> and\u00a0would\u00a0bar federal forfeiture<\/a>\u00a0of any assets derived from state-legal cannabis enterprises.<\/p>\n In July, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris introduced the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which legalization advocacy group\u00a0NORML<\/a>\u00a0calls \u201carguably the most revolutionary and socially conscious federal marijuana reform bill introduced to date.\u201d In addition to descheduling cannabis and expunging prior convictions, the MORE Act\u00a0would establish social equity programs for cannabis entrepreneurs, with a focus on those communities that have been most adversely impacted by cannabis prohibition.<\/p>\n In a Capitol Hill hearing this July that\u00a0advocates hailed<\/a>\u00a0as \u201chistoric,\u201d numerous Congress members openly embraced lifting the federal strictures on cannabis \u2014 and even descheduling. The discussion was particularly framed in terms of recognizing and correcting the racial and social iniquities of cannabis prohibition and the War on Drugs.<\/p>\n A bill that would make it easier for cannabis businesses to access the federally regulated banking system is the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which actually\u00a0passed the House<\/a>\u00a0in late September, by a vote of 321 to 103. This legislation would reform banking regulations affecting institutions that handle cannabis-related accounts, basically allowing cannabis businesses operating in conformity with state law to access financial services. It got a big boost in May, when a group of attorneys general from 38 states and territories\u00a0penned an open letter<\/a>\u00a0urging Congress to pass the bill.<\/p>\n Republicans in the House were narrowly divided in their vote on the SAFE Banking Act \u2014 so this may bode well for its chances in the Senate. It may also be an encouraging sign for passage of one of the above-mentioned legalization bills. Getting a legalization bill through the Republican-controlled Senate will obviously pose a far greater challenge than the (daunting enough) prospect of passage by the Democratic-controlled House. The Republican commitment to \u201cstates\u2019 rights\u201d\u00a0served some GOP lawmakers to support the SAFE Banking Act. The libertarian streak in the Republican Party could, conceivably, move enough votes in the Senate to get a legalization measure over the top \u2014 despite the\u00a0intransigent attitude<\/a>\u00a0of the Trump White House. Which of course raises the prospect of a presidential veto, and the greater challenge still of mustering enough votes to override it.<\/p>\n In short, we may be closer to federal legalization than ever before. But there\u2019s a lot of hurdles to get past before you light up a celebratory joint.<\/p>\n We saw another sign of hope in June, when the House approved legislation that could significantly lift the federal pressure on cannabis. Building on longstanding policy that bars federal cannabis enforcement in medical marijuana states, the House\u00a0passed a measure<\/a>\u00a0that would instate a similar hands-off approach to enforcement in states that have generally legalized. The measure came as a rider to an appropriations bill, sponsored by representatives Earl Blumenauer, Tom McClintock and Eleanor Holmes Norton.<\/p>\n Yesterday, on Oct. 31, the Senate approved their version of the spending legislation that also prohibited the Department of Justice from using any funds to prosecute anyone in compliance with state cannabis laws. (Federal cannabis enforcement in medical marijuana states has been\u00a0effectively restrained<\/a>\u00a0since passage of the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment in 2014.)<\/p>\n Also in June, the House\u00a0passed a measure<\/a>\u00a0pushed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that would cut some funding to the DEA and transfer the money into opioid treatment programs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Legislation\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0in the House in March would protect the jobs of federal employees who use cannabis in states where their use is legal. The Fairness in Federal Drug Testing Under State Laws Act would prohibit testing for cannabis \u201cfrom being used as the sole factor to deny or terminate federal employment for civilian positions at executive branch agencies if the individual is in compliance with the marijuana laws in their state of residence.\u201d<\/p>\n Sen. Booker last year also\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0legislation that would eliminate drug convictions as a bar to federal financial aid. At issue is the document formally known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which includes the following text: \u201cHave you been convicted for the possession or sale of illegal drugs for an offense that occurred while you were receiving federal student aid (such as grants, work-study, or loans)?\u201d That bill, which would remove the offending text from FAFSA, has also been\u00a0reintroduced<\/a>\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you want cannabis to be federally legal?<\/p>\n The post The State of Cannabis Today: When Will We See Federal Pot Reform?<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Having cannabis removed from the federal list of controlled substances has long been the holy grail of legalization advocates. Several bills have now been introduced on Capitol Hill to do exactly that, but do any stand a chance of becoming law in the current polarized climate? Here\u2019s what you needContinue 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":[50,136,1594,1348,6855,848,12786,3092,81,12787,7565,5245,6165],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39293"}],"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=39293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39294,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39293\/revisions\/39294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Legalization Measures Are Now Before Congress?<\/h4>\n
What\u2019s the Status of the SAFE Banking Act?\u00a0<\/h4>\n
What Other Cannabis-Related Legislation Is Pending?<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The State of Cannabis Today: When Will We See Federal Pot Reform?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"