U.S. Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized the Biden administration\u2019s planned move of cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) during comments Wednesday at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing, citing increases in vehicle injury and fatality rates that he attributed to the legalization of adult-use marijuana.<\/p>\n
Delivering remarks to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Maritime, Freight and Ports, Cruz brought up a number of transportation-related concerns before pivoting to marijuana legalization and federal rescheduling.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother notable issue is drugged driving,\u201d he said, reading from a prepared statement. \u201cA 2022 research paper found that from 2009 to 2019, legalization of recreational marijuana was \u2018associated with a 6.5 percent increase in injury crash rates and a 2.3 percent increase in fatal crash rates.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd yet the Biden administration, rather than working to keep our families safe on the roadways, has instead decreed that it will reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I substance to Schedule III,\u201d he continued<\/a>. \u201cThe American Trucking Association quickly followed this news with a letter highlighting that rescheduling marijuana without an explicit allowance for a test for its use would create confusion and result in \u2018serious safety impacts to safety-sensitive industries.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Though little else of the hearing involved marijuana, a representative of the American Automobile Association (AAA) testified that a small proportion of drivers appeared to have increased their dangerous driving behavior during the past few years, including driving after recently consuming cannabis.<\/p>\n AAA research, said Jake Nelson, the group\u2019s traffic safety and research director, showed that while driving generally decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, some people actually drove more \u201cand appeared to be riskier than average.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNationally, drivers admit to engaging more regularly in behaviors like speeding, red-light running and driving within an hour of using cannabis,\u201d he said. \u201cMost alarming was a 24 percent increase in self-reported drunk driving.\u201d<\/p>\n Cruz has been broadly critical of marijuana legalization, though he\u2019s also said at some points that individual states should have the ability to decide how to regulate cannabis. \u201cI think it ought to be up to the states,\u201d he said during a 2018 debate<\/a>. \u201cI think Colorado can decide one way. I think Texas can decide another.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Cruz has also been critical of recommended federal guidance on alcohol consumption.<\/p>\n During an interview with Newsmax late last year, the senator drank a beer on camera and said federal health officials \u201ccan kiss my ass\u201d<\/a> if they decided to move forward with a plan to reduce the recommended maximum consumption of alcohol to two drinks per week.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is it with liberals and wanting to control every damn aspect of your life?\u201d said Cruz, who himself supports government bans on\u00a0abortion\u00a0and trans-affirming\u00a0healthcare. \u201cIf they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly they can kiss my ass.\u201d<\/p>\n Cruz also laid into a Biden judicial nominee<\/a> during a 2022 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, asserting that the judge had been a \u201cpartisan advocate for causes,\u201d including \u201clegalizing potent strains of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n The Biden administration\u2019s drug czar said this week that\u00a0the Justice Department\u2019s rescheduling determination is \u201cbased on science and evidence,\u201d<\/a> adding that the change will ease research restrictions around the use of cannabis to treat \u201cchronic illnesses, chronic pain and diseases like cancer.\u201d He also suggested incorrectly that the move would allow marijuana to be prescribed by doctors.<\/p>\n A report published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) earlier this month said\u00a0further action from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be needed<\/a>\u00a0before marijuana products become available by prescription.<\/p>\n CRS has also noted that rescheduling\u00a0would not legalize cannabis or bring state-regulated markets<\/a>\u2014including medical marijuana systems\u2014\u201cinto compliance\u201d with federal law.<\/p>\n The proposed rule to federally reschedule marijuana was officially posted last week, kicking off a\u00a0public comment period that\u2019s expected to elicit a major response<\/a>\u00a0from supporters and opponents of cannabis reform.<\/p>\n Marijuana reform advocates and stakeholders have made clear that they intend to leverage the opportunity, with some planning to support the reclassification while others intend to call for descheduling cannabis altogether. Prohibitionists are expected to oppose the incremental policy change and seek to keep marijuana in Schedule I, and there\u2019s also a looming threat of litigation.<\/p>\n While DOJ will take all public comments submitted by July 22 into consideration as it weighs the reform, it said in the notice that one of the topics its especially interested in hearing about is\u00a0the \u201cunique economic impacts\u201d of the rescheduling proposal<\/a>\u00a0given that state-level legalization has created a \u201cmultibillion dollar industry\u201d that stands to benefit from possible federal tax relief under the reform.<\/p>\n When\u00a0President Joe Biden announced the administration\u2019s rescheduling action<\/a>\u00a0last week, he described it as consistent with his belief that nobody should be jailed over cannabis possession. As a statutory matter, that wouldn\u2019t necessarily apply with simple rescheduling because it\u2019d remain federally illegal. But the White House has not publicly commented on the economic impacts of the incremental reform.<\/p>\n Majority Of Texans Support Marijuana Legalization, Including Plurality Of Republican Voters, Poll Finds<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Ted Cruz Suggests Marijuana Rescheduling Might Lead To More People Dying In Car Crashes From Impaired Driving<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
U.S. Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized the Biden administration\u2019s planned move of cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) during comments Wednesday at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing, citing increases in vehicle injury and fatality rates that he attributed to the legalization of adult-use marijuana. Delivering remarksContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75561"}],"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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75562,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75561\/revisions\/75562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Ted Cruz Suggests Marijuana Rescheduling Might Lead To More People Dying In Car Crashes From Impaired Driving<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"