This week a key House committee advanced a bill that would federally legalize cannabis.
This had been the last step before the bill is taken up by the full chamber and it has now cleared its path to a floor vote on Friday.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said in a briefing with reporters had said on Wednesday that the bill will start with debate on Thursday, a day ahead of the final vote.
There will be one hour of debate on the bill in the House, and that time will be “equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member” of the Judiciary Committee.
This is a historical moment for marijuana reform advocates and proponents. If the House, which is Democratic-controlled, approves of the legislation, it would be the very first time a chamber of Congress has voted to deschedule the drug.
Rules Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) said in his opening remarks that the legislation “will reform the disastrous war on drug laws,” and that the bill’s advancement “is a testament to the many Americans who have pushed Congress to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level for many years now.”
It also “brings restorative justice to so many Americans while providing resources to those harmed by the war on drugs,” added McGovern.
“Some have wondered why we are acting on this now,” he said. “Well, I think it’s long past time and, in the words of Martin Luther King, ‘the time is always right to do what is right.’”
The MORE Act “really is designed to eliminate decades of bad law and decades of discrimination,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), a cosponsor of the bill. “The cannabis laws were arbitrarily added to our statutes back in 1970 without any study, without any real effort to determine whether there were benefits or detriments of whatever. And thousands and thousands and thousands of people have been incarcerated ever since.”
Perlmutter tweeted, “I’m glad to see the #MOREAct get a vote in the House. This comprehensive legislation will help modernize federal #cannabis policies to ensure fairness, equity & inclusion. Reforming federal cannabis law is long overdue & why I continue to push the #SAFEBanking & broader reforms.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) said that it “is with a great sense of relief that I am supporting this long overdue measure and encourage the rest of my colleagues to do so as well.”
“This is not to promote drug use. It is not to undermine law enforcement. But rather to bring justice to millions of Americans,” she added.