First reported by the Ohio Capital Journal, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer has asked senators to help shape marijuana legislation bill.
“Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once famously said that the states are America’s laboratories of democracy,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote in a letter to colleagues on Thursday.
“When it comes to reforming the nation’s antiquated cannabis laws, he could not have been more right,” he added.
Schumer explained, “This is an issue of individual freedom and basic fairness that clearly transcends party lines,” they said. “However, one major hurdle continues to stand in the way of states’ ability to make their own decisions about cannabis—the continued prohibition of marijuana at the federal level. As more and more states move to legalize cannabis for both adult and medical use, the federal government has an important role to play. Hundreds of millions of Americans live in states that have legalized cannabis in some form while it remains illegal at the federal level.”
He further said, “This discrepancy leads to confusion and uncertainty and raises significant questions around criminal justice reform, economic development and small business growth, and public health and safety, all of which we believe require some type of federal answer.”
The senator and his colleagues first unveiled the 163-page draft Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act in July 2021.
This proposal aims to federally deschedule cannabis, expunge prior convictions, allow people to petition for resentencing, maintain the authority of states to set their own marijuana policies and remove collateral consequences like immigration-related penalties for people who’ve been criminalized over the plant.
The bill also impose a federal tax on marijuana products and put some of that revenue toward grant programs meant to support people from communities most impacted by prohibition who want to participate in the industry.
The legislation would additionally transfer regulatory authority over cannabis from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
Speaking on the Senate floor on Thursday, Schumer discussed the Dear Colleague letter and said that “it’s long past time for the federal government to catch up” to states that have ended prohibition.
“This is about individual freedom and about basic fairness. For decades, federal cannabis laws have caused immense damage to millions of Americans, particularly Black and Hispanic people who have been unfairly targeted by these laws,” he said.
“We need to change that. We need to create opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses to legitimately pursue new opportunities, and comprehensive federal cannabis legislation is critical, critical to reaching that goal.”
