The federal government is strikingly out of step with public opinion on cannabis.
Even though a supermajority of Americans say marijuana should be legal for adults and the House has passed a bill to legalize it, major cannabis reform remains unlikely this year.
Why? Because Republicans and a few Democratic senators don’t want to do it.
“Marijuana? I haven’t even thought about marijuana. Jesus Christ, you smoking?” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) asked HuffPost on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, the House passed a bill that would legalize weed at the federal level, expunge cannabis-related criminal records and set the stage for a nationwide legal marijuana industry. But that bill is almost certainly dead on arrival in the Senate.
Instead, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have been trying to build consensus for a Senate version of cannabis reform.
The trio collaborated on a discussion draft last year that, like the House bill, would have legalized marijuana by removing it from the list of drugs banned under the Controlled Substances Act, which lists “marihuana” in the same category as heroin. The bill would also have expunged nonviolent federal criminal records and allowed marijuana businesses greater access to financial services.
Schumer has said he intends to introduce the new version of the bill sometime before the August recess. It’s an open question whether it’ll get a vote.
The problem for Schumer is the math. Democrats control 50 seats in the 100-member Senate, and they would need 60 votes to move a cannabis bill, meaning at least 10 Republicans would need to come aboard, and possibly more, since several Democratic senators seem like they’re not ready to legalize weed.
“I’m not where many people in my party are,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) told HuffPost. The senator, whose state voted to legalize marijuana in 2020, expressed concern with implementation of a cannabis legalization on the national level.
“Are we set up to keep it out of the hands of young people? What’s the law going to be? Can anybody smoke it? There’s a lot of ifs and buts there,” Tester said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), another key Democratic holdout, said she would take a look at the bill but generally isn’t supportive of legalizing marijuana.
Republicans are even less enthusiastic about cannabis reform. “I don’t know what their bill looks like, but I would think it’d be unlikely” that Republicans would support it, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), a member of the Republican leadership team, told HuffPost. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said marijuana’s ill effects on children and other vulnerable populations need more study.
The illegality of marijuana at the federal level is strikingly out of step with popular opinion. A poll this month found that 69% of Americans favor full legalization, and that’s a typical survey finding. Support for legal weed has grown in recent years as most states have legalized the drug for medicinal use, with 18 states greenlighting cannabis for recreational use.
Schumer should be prepared to settle for lesser alternatives to legalization this year, said Morgan Fox, policy director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
“It’s my hope that Senate…
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