Pot Measure Highlights ‘Total Disconnect’ Between State, Federal Cannabis Laws

In yet another attempt to make sense of America’s convoluted cannabis laws, the House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on a measure that would remove marijuana from the federal list of illegal drugs and eliminate all criminal penalties associated with the drug.The bill, authored by a New York Democrat, Jerry Nadler, and dubbed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, also would impose a federal tax on marijuana sales and erase the criminal records of nonviolent marijuana offenders.The House rules committee is expected to hold a hearing on the bill on Wednesday, after which it will go to the House floor for a full vote. The last time a version of the bill came before the House, in late 2020, it passed 228-164, with six Democrats voting against it and five Republicans backing it.Despite widespread public support for decriminalization, however, cannabis industry insiders say the measure — if passed by the House again, which is not a foregone conclusion — is likely to hit a wall in the U.S. Senate.Michael Correia, a lobbyist for the National Cannabis Industry Association, says the 60 votes needed to formally end the federal ban on marijuana once and for all just aren’t there.“There isn’t this groundswell of support saying, ‘Let’s legalize it,’” Mr. Correia said. “There’s a total disconnect between what states are doing and what the federal government is doing.”Marijuana is now legal for medicinal purposes in 37 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and for recreational purposes in 18. Legal sales of the drug totaled more than $20 billion in 2020, yet the federal government spends an estimated $3.6 billion and arrests 600,000 people every year enforcing the federal ban.The disconnect between state and federal laws has had consequences far beyond the legal system. One of the main reasons for the current shortage of long-haul truckers, for example, is federal rules requiring random quarterly drug testing of all drivers. Drivers who test positive for marijuana use at any point in the previous 30 days or so are immediately dismissed and placed on a federal do-not-drive database.Trucking costs are soaring, and the reason “is very simple,” a Wells Fargo equity strategy analyst, Chris Harvey, said on a recent conference call. “It’s really about drug testing. We’ve legalized marijuana in some states but, obviously, not all, but some. And what you have as a trucker is you have a federal mandate for drug testing.” There are currently nine different marijuana-related bills inching their way through Congress. One of them, introduced by a South Carolina Republican, Nancy Mace, would also lift the federal ban on marijuana and give states freer rein to regulate cannabis as they see fit. Another would halt the deportation of legal immigrants for minor marijuana-related infractions, and yet another would open the door for Small Business Administration loans to cannabis-related businesses.On the Senate side, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to introduce a comprehensive legalization bill by April, calling the issue a social justice one and pledging to “right the wrongs of the past and ensure that the federal government is matching the advancements made in states across the country.” A bill known as the SAFE Banking Act is intended to help address another consequence of the federal ban — the skyrocketing rate of robberies plaguing businesses that legally sell marijuana. Because banks and credit card companies will not work with marijuana-related businesses, the stores must do business exclusively in cash, and the bad guys know it.Cannabis shops in Washington state, for example, have seen the number of armed robberies shoot up this year. A coalition of retailers, the Craft Cannabis Coalition, reported at least 77 robberies since January, several of them deadly.“This is a public safety issue. It is also a dangerous workplace issue,” a Washington state senator, Karen Keiser, said during a hearing on the topic held by the state Liquor and Cannabis Board on Tuesday. “We cannot dither around any further and wait for Congress to act. People are dying.”The banking act, which enjoys bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, would prohibit federal regulators from penalizing banks and credit card companies that do business with legitimate cannabis-related businesses.Mr. Correia, the cannabis lobbyist who has been knocking on doors in Washington for nine years on the topic, believes the banking bill or something like it has fairly good odds of passing in the current Congress. He says, though, the legislative stasis around full legalization will likely continue for a few more years at least. “It used to be a Republican versus Democrat thing,” he said. “It tends to be more of a generational thing now. You often see young Republicans with more modern views on the topic than older Democrats.”The average age of a U.S. senator in the 117th Congress is 64.3 years old.

Pot Measure Highlights ‘Total Disconnect’ Between State, Federal Cannabis Laws

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