{"id":3731,"date":"2022-04-02T16:29:45","date_gmt":"2022-04-02T16:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/house-passes-marijuana-legalization-bill-again-but-with-no-clear-path-forward-politico\/"},"modified":"2022-04-02T16:29:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-02T16:29:45","slug":"house-passes-marijuana-legalization-bill-again-but-with-no-clear-path-forward-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/04\/02\/house-passes-marijuana-legalization-bill-again-but-with-no-clear-path-forward-politico\/","title":{"rendered":"House passes marijuana legalization bill (again), but with no clear path forward – POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cannabis<\/a>
Weed vote exposes political rift on criminal justice reform.
A marijuana activist holds a flag during a march on July 4, 2021. | Alex Wong\/Getty Images
By Natalie Fertig<\/a><\/span>
a major campaign promise<\/a>, passing a party-line bill that has little chance of getting the necessary Republican support to pass the Senate.
\u201cI was a supporter of the War on Drugs \u2014 I\u2019ve been here a long time,\u201d House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer<\/span> said on the House floor on Friday, pointing out that Black Americans are four times more likely than white people<\/a> to be arrested for low level cannabis crimes. \u201cThis bill is a matter of justice and equal opportunity\u2026 so that Americans and America can become a better, stronger, more fair, and more just America.\u201d
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/span> plans to introduce his own cannabis bill soon, but does not currently have the Democrat votes to pass it, let alone the Republicans needed to overcome a filibuster.
Today\u2019s vote highlighted the growing rift between the parties \u2014 and even among Democrats \u2014 on how to address cannabis policy. Despite growing support among GOP lawmakers for legalization and polling that shows two-thirds of Americans back that stance, just three Republicans voted for the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act.
That was fewer than the five GOP lawmakers who backed the bill in 2020 \u2014 two are no longer in Congress.
The MORE Act debate underlined a fundamental question that divides the parties: When changing the nation\u2019s drug laws, should the federal government also take steps to provide financial incentives to individuals and communities who were most harshly impacted by the war on drugs?
Republicans say no.
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to be able to get Republicans on board\u2026 the way that the MORE Act is done,\u201d said Rep. Nancy Mace<\/span> (R-S.C.), who introduced a bill last year that decriminalizes cannabis and expunges some records but does not create federal grant programs. The federal social equity efforts were a major reason for her \u201cnay\u201d vote on Friday. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have Republicans on board if we\u2019re going to have any chance of getting it done in the Senate.\u201d
For many Democrats, however, the equity grant programs are nonnegotiable.
\u201cThis is a major criminal justice reform bill,\u201d said Rep. Barbara Lee<\/span> (D-Calif.), one of the co-chairs of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. \u201cSo negotiating that away \u2014 to leave [affected communities] behind \u2014 that to me is just immoral.\u201d
In fact, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi<\/span> on Thursday went so far as to frame the MORE Act as a criminal justice reform bill. In her weekly news conference, she touted the criminal justice and economic provisions of the bill, and explained that the lack of similar provisions in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was one reason that it failed in the upper chamber.
The Senate \u2014 where Schumer, Sen. Cory Booker<\/span> (D-N.J.) and Sen. Ron Wyden<\/span> (D-Ore.), are working on their own comprehensive cannabis bill \u2014 is even tougher ground for weed.
Booker and Schumer have drawn a line in the sand on marijuana policy, refusing to even hold a hearing on a cannabis banking bill<\/span> the House has approved six times because it does not address criminal justice reform.
But Democrats\u2019 pursuit of their perfect bill worries some pro-cannabis lawmakers and advocates, who do not see a clear path forward for sweeping drug policy changes under Republican leadership in either chamber \u2014 especially the Senate. Given that Democrats may not control both houses of Congress come January, the window for federal cannabis policy change may not be open much longer.
\u201cWe need those social equity programs,\u201d one moderate Democrat lawmaker said, granted anonymity to speak candidly about his leadership\u2019s strategy. \u201cNonetheless, if I have to choose between nothing and something that, going forward, will not put our children, our neighbors or friends in jail \u2014 I\u2019ll choose the latter.\u201d
Conspicuously absent from the \u201cayes\u201d on Friday were some of the most pro-cannabis Republican voices on Capitol Hill, including Mace and Rep. Dave Joyce<\/span> of Ohio, a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. Joyce\u2019s office circulated a memo among Republicans earlier this week outlining his critiques of the MORE Act and why he intended to vote against it \u2014 and inviting discussion on Republican approaches to marijuana policy.
Joyce\u2019s office said he reached out to Democrats to try and forge consensus on the best approach to overhauling federal cannabis laws. He sent a letter to Judiciary <\/b>Chair Jerry Nadler<\/span> (D-N.Y.), the chief sponsor of the MORE Act, in February \u2014 offering to work with him to create a bill that was more palatable to Republicans. Joyce\u2019s office said they also had one meeting with Nadler\u2019s staff to discuss their primary concerns with the bill, but were not invited back for any further discussion.
Nadler\u2019s office declined an interview request for this story. His office told POLITICO that the chair asked many Republican lawmakers to cosponsor the MORE Act, but did not answer questions about the letter from Joyce or requests from Republicans to change the bill.
It\u2019s unclear how many additional Republican votes Mace and Joyce could bring to the legislation \u2014 between their two decriminalization bills they have four additional Republican cosponsors. But Joyce\u2019s office said the bill, as it stands, is \u201ctoo impractical and too flawed\u201d to even start a conversation with GOP members who are interested in changing America\u2019s drug laws.
Mace says her cannabis reform bill \u2014 the States Reform Act \u2014 polls better among Republican primary voters in her district than broad federal legalization, but she is also facing a tough primary in May and was recently targeted by Super PAC ads<\/a> on her support for cannabis legalization.
Despite declining GOP support for the MORE Act, Democrats\u2019 nerves on cannabis legislation have calmed. When a vote on the bill was scheduled in September 2020, moderate Democrats balked<\/a>, worried that voting to legalize weed could hurt their reelection chances. But the politics around cannabis have changed so rapidly nationwide that those concerns appear to have evaporated.
In fact, six Democrats voted against the bill in 2020, but only two voted against the MORE Act on Friday. One of the lawmakers who previously voted against the bill \u2014 Rep. Conor Lamb<\/span> of Pennsylvania \u2014 is in a tough primary race<\/a> with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman for the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania\u2019s open Senate seat. Fetterman has campaigned vocally on cannabis legalization, both for his state and federally. This time around, Lamb voted in favor of the bill.
\u201cI think it\u2019s clear that Democrats understand that this is something that actually helps them politically,\u201d said Rep. Earl Blumenauer<\/span> (D-Ore.), the unofficial cannabis dean on Capitol Hill. \u201cAnd opposition hurts them politically, at least in Democratic primaries and with Republican swing voters.\u201d
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Cannabis Weed vote exposes political rift on criminal justice reform. A marijuana activist holds a flag during a march on July 4, 2021. | Alex Wong\/Getty Images By Natalie Fertig 04\/01\/2022 01:26 PM EDT Link CopiedThe House passed a far-reaching marijuana legalization bill on Friday by a 220-204 vote, largely along party lines and still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}