While several issues inspired the Senate’s shutdown last Friday, stirring uncertainty for the future of federal marijuana policy, congressional advocates now have three weeks to curtail the potential crackdown on the nation’s billion-dollar marijuana industry.
Since concern began to surface last December over whether the next federal budget bill would include protections for medical marijuana, congressional Democrats have been working overtime to maintain the industry’s assurances.
The Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment, sponsored by representatives from California and Oregon, has been included in the federal budget bill since 2014, but in the waning hours of debate over the House spending bill, a similar amendment was ultimately pulled from the legislation.
Rep. Jared Polis (R-Colorado) introduced a measure that would have prohibited the Department of Justice from spending funds to prosecute any state-legal marijuana operations. However, heated debate in the House Rules Committee led to Polis deciding to drop the issue.
Polis pointed to Attorney General Jeff Session’s New Year’s resolution/DOJ memo to crack down on marijuana businesses as an indication for increased urgency to protect the industry.
“I wasn’t initially planning on offering this amendment,” Polis said during the committee hearing. “But what happened is—just recently, Mr. Sessions, the attorney general, has made this language a lot more necessary to include in any funding bill because he has effectively ended the guidance from the Department of Justice…”
The committee chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) (no relation to the attorney general) fired back with concerns over marijuana’s addictive properties.
“Marijuana is an addictive product, and the merchants of addiction make it that way,” he said. “They make it for addiction. They make it to where our people, our young people, become addicted to marijuana and keep going.”
Rep. Sessions’ comments are little more than a red herring at this point, meant more to tie up the legislative process than produce laws in line with public opinion.
Friday morning, attention turned to the Senate as Democrats held off voting on yet another budget extension, which would have maintained the protections through Feb. 16. Senate Democrats finally allowed an extension through Feb. 8 on Monday morning. In the meantime, marijuana proponents in Congress still have time to push through amendments that could maintain medical marijuana protections.
While the right’s stonewalling may extend to potential marijuana protections, medical marijuana could land in the category of concessions congressional Republicans are willing to make in the interest of compromising on a final budget.
Currently, two concurrent bills are in committees in both the House and Senate. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-California) and Ro Khanna (D-California) introduced a companion bill to Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-New Jersey) “Marijuana Justice Act” to remove marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s schedule of illicit drugs.
Another of Lee’s bills aims to extend protections to states’ medical marijuana programs. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) are cosponsoring the bills in addition to a flurry of at least five other bills intended to strengthen the country’s marijuana industry.
The repeatedly extended Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment is the only thing standing in Jeff Sessions’ way of his memo becoming the second-most dominant federal policy on marijuana, just behind the DEA’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug.
Which, if any, of these amendments make it into the final budget will help shape a significant portion of marijuana policy in the coming years. Sessions’ memo in conjunction with the disappearing Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment has ignited a new urgency for reformative marijuana policy, but given the stubbornness and thick skulls resting on the shoulders of Republican leadership these days, Sessions’ memo is likely headed for supremacy.
This article appears in Jan 25-31, 2018.
They totally ignore it’s medicinal properties that assist our great American Heros in dealing with their PTSD. Instead, we want to fill them with “legalized” opiates. That, made this nation a nation of zombies. So much so, it’s a “crisis”. Where’s the common sense? Oh, Sorry, I forgot. Common sense is only common among those with “sense”. Good riddens.
This is not a Democrat/Republican issue. There is a lot of bi-partisan support for ending the stupidity.
I use medical marijuana for my neuropathy. I’d be pissed if I had to give it up.
ABSOLUTELY THIS IS NOT A BIPARTISAN ISSUE !!!!!!
THIS IS A RIGHTS ISSUE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are the bull in the room on this issue.
Arizona is the battle ground this and the next 2 elections. This next midterm can only gain us weight or pen us for the slaughter.
Democrat or Republican is only what side of the barn your pen is on, morning or evening sun. Reality of it does not change, move in one door feast, move along out the other fat and ready for the market. Does it really matter what your diet is if someone else is supplying it. Green for dawn Red meat for dusk the process stays the same.
So ask your self are you going to be the finger pointer to the villain or ask-DEMAND for equal protections under the law the same for all Citizens Democrat & Republican anything less is a loss for all.
Why do we allow the Feds to continue to say that Marijuana is Addictive and has no medical use. There are 30 states now that can prove this is not true and that the Feds have been perpetuating this lie. The Opioid epidemic and other drug related addictions can be drastically curtailed with the use of cannabis but this is what Big Pharma is afraid of. The Government is controlled by the 4 Trillion dollar Medical industry. The last thing the Pharmaceutical industry wants to see is a loss of sales of their biggest revenue producing drugs.
Cannabis is the most amazing plant on the planet and the biggest crime is that it is still federally illegal.
Do we want marijuana to be the preventive measure Opioid addiction? Or the first line of treatment to compete with Methadone wheres the success there? Are we thinking collectively that a self acquired, self administered, mind altering drug is a new therapy YEA GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.
That line of thinking is why we have the FDA> DEA in the first place. The whole reason Insys and other drug manufactures are synthetically morphing THC and other cannabinols in the first place. Is because it will be pharmaceutical tested for strength and professionally administered with analytical test results therapy. Cant do that with the guy coming home ailing after 30 years of endeavors smoke a joint go to bed get fired the next day tested positive.
See the paradox?
The paradox is gone with the repeal of schedule one your doctor can administer then.
So is the question legalization or repeal schedule one
LEGALIZATION. I wasn’t always a right-wing asshole. I used to be a bona fide, Woodstock tested hippie asshole! In Oct. of 1969 I got busted with a joint and was facing 5 years for possession of a dangerous drug. Luckily the cop was a total ass hole who lied through his teeth on the stand and I beat it on illegal search and seizure. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to go through what I did.
So, what’s to dislike??
CW13, This is the picture legalization fine. I dont see anyone in this blog against it lately.
However the big picture is there can be no legalization if the whole plant continues to be on schedule one.
Making it illegal on a federal issue while legal in some states not in others so.
If I read your post you are fine with others to be locked up in states that maintain it to be illegal. Still experiencing the realities you had on posession. Just that you can be legal in the state your in is fine with you? So if you drive through Kansas on the interstate have a joint your AZ MMj card dont mean shit. You could be back right where you were in 1969.
Then family and friends can say whats the issue with legalization man. Did you see how the cop lied and screwed CW13 got 5 years poor dude and he was stopped at the bus station, traffic whatever, tour travel.
There are huge obstacles in the road to free market legalization. The first one is the path the road is going to take. Are we headed to an addicted class of citizens. It seems the powers want to lump all substance abuse into one category, The exception for the most abused alcohol tobacco is exempt. The powers that be have stated all legal substance abuse is the responsibility of the abuser. Except for legal administered opiates Cocaine. We dont make the plant illegal we make the some derivatives of the plant. However not the case in Marijuana but madly trying to copy it.
That’s the issue with schedule one It is against equal rights