Posted on 11/20/2020 8:12:52 AM PST by NobleFree
A historic bill to legalize marijuana at the federal level is expected to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives in December.
This would be the first time a chamber of Congress has ever voted on removing marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act.
Cannabis was included as what is called a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. Schedule I drugs are defined as having a high potential for abuse and no medical benefit. Other Schedule I drugs include heroin, LSD, ecstasy and peyote.
“I write to share the busy Floor schedule we have for the remainder of the year,” starts a letter from Representative Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader. “In December … the House will vote on the MORE Act to decriminalize cannabis and expunge convictions for non-violent cannabis offenses that have prevented many Americans from getting jobs, applying for credit and loans, and accessing opportunities that make it possible to get ahead in our economy.”
The MORE Act - Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act - includes language that would expunge some cannabis records and create grant opportunities for people who have been negatively impacted by the criminalization of marijuana in addition to removing it from its Schedule I classification.
The act is sponsored by now-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, and co-sponsored by seven other representatives including New Jersey Congressman Cory Booker and Massachusetts Congresswoman Elizabeth Warren.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is opposed to the act, and some say the odds of it passing the senate, even if it passes the House, are very slim.
Marijuana is already legal in more than a dozen states, despite the federal designation as a Schedule I drug.
Studies show more people support the legalization of marijuana. A 2019 Gallup poll showed majority-support across major political parties for legalizing marijuana. It showed 51% of Republicans, 68% of independents, and 76% of Democrats are in favor of it.
During the November election, medical and recreational marijuana use was on the ballot in a handful of states. Four states, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota, voted to make recreational marijuana use legal in their states. Mississippi voters approved marijuana for medical use.
Even if the MORE Act passes both chambers of Congress, it would not make sales of marijuana legal. Regulation of marijuana would be left to states to decide how to handle it.
Will go in trash bag without the Senate.
>>Other Schedule I drugs include heroin, LSD, ecstasy and peyote.
Oregon decriminalized heroin, LSD, and cocaine this November.
I’m no drug-addled libertarian, but I fail to see how a “Schedule I drug” or a “Controlled Substances Act” has any basis in constitutional law.
I’m biased because my mom was alcoholic and I’m very wary of any drug scene. A drug that is mildly hallucinogenic and that makes people slow and stupid is not harmless.
My uncle drank himself into a diaper and a wheelchair. Should we ban alcohol?
A drug that is mildly hallucinogenic and that makes people slow and stupid is not harmless.
Red herring - the argument for legalization is not that it's "harmless."
Drug-addled libertarian!
Seriesly, federal drug laws, like most of the federal Leviathan, are founded on an FDR-era "substantial effect" test that has no basis in the language of the Constitution. True American conservatives cannot support this - although right-statists posing as conservatives do.
Thank You for posting NobleFree.
The US is going to be like Somalis on Kat one day.
Never met a regular pot smoker who was worth a damn though the pro pot folks will spew out names like Elon Musk.
The liberal reading of the commerce clause allowed this. Before this all congress could do is ban sales across state lines, however now congress calls all commerce interstate commerce and can regulate anything.
Congress has no power to do this, per the 10th Amendment (reserving power to the States).
When Prohibition was enacted, it had to be adopted as a Constitutional Amendment; ditto with Repeal.
Now MJ is supposed to be treated as somehow in the purview of Congress?
If we're not like them due to the legality of the stupefying drug alcohol, legality of marijuana won't do it either.
Never met a regular pot smoker who was worth a damn
Who you've met is not a validly extrapolatable subset of the population. And requiring people to be worth a damn is not a legitimate function of government, nor a federal authority granted by the Constitution.
I agree 100%, it was the FDR Courts that gave too much power to the feds. It is why a home garden can be regulated. Their logic is that by growing your own food, you are harming interstate commerce by not buying food and hence engaging in interstate commerce.
Sadly, we partly have Scalia to thank for that. He concurred with the liberal majority in Gonzales v. Raich, which held that the Controlled Substances Act was valid under the Commerce Clause, even when applied to an individual growing small amounts of marijuana for his own use. Scalia differed from the majority’s reasoning only in that he believed the CSA’s application in this case was authorized under the Necessary and Proper Clause rather than the Commerce Clause itself. O’Connor, Thomas, and Rehnquist dissented.
I know a bunch of you FReepers conspire with the Left (like Antonin Scalia did) to corrupt the Interstate Commerce Clause to let the Left wing federal bureaucracy regulate everyone and everything, so that the Left will let you use it for your little religious war on drugs without disastrously amending the Constitution like your forebears did with alcohol.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS NO AUTHORITY TO REGULATE OR BAN DRUGS EXCEPT CROSSING STATE LINES
THE SUPREME COURT HAS NO AUTHORITY TO SAY THEY DO (in Wickard v Filburn (1942)
except that many of YOU have conspired with the Left in every election since then to let them get away with it.
But you see many states legalizing and the feds doing nothing about it because you have made the Left so secure they almost don’t need you anymore, so you get big bureaucracy and no war on drugs.
Congratulations.
Those of us living in states where it has now been legal for years can attest to the fact that it has become big business and is causing great harm... especially to younger people and children. You can't drive around the block where we live without having your car filled with the skunk like foul odor of marijuana from the drivers in front of you. It is more than a nuisance... it has become a new definition of pestilence and is quickly becoming a grave threat to the future of this country as we decline into mediocrity.
Scalia was a leftist POS. He just looked conservative by comparison, except to Thomas. I want 9 Thomases.
But you see many states legalizing and the feds doing nothing about it because you have made the Left so secure they almost don’t need you anymore, so you get big bureaucracy and no war on drugs.
They sold their birthright for a mess of pottage - and now the pottage is being taken away. Serves them right.
You are wrong because you look only at marijuana and problems and statistics associated with it.
Everywhere marijuana has been legalized, marijuana has displaced alcohol and proven to be the lesser of two evils. The combined marijuana-alcohol accident and health statistics improve.
And if you say eliminate both evils, the result of that is worse than the problems you claim to want to fix.
Freedom is the right to sin and you can’t get past that.
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