Most of the news about marijuana legislation last week emanated from the nation’s capital with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) introducing major reform legislation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also floated a trial balloon suggesting increased federal interference with state laws. Meanwhile in Texas, a new medical marijuana bill was proposed.
National:
On Tuesday, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a comprehensive marijuana reform bill in the U.S. Senate. The Marijuana Justice Act would remove cannabis from the list of federally controlled substances, effectively making the plant legal at the federal level. Federal convictions for marijuana use and possession would be expunged, and those currently serving time for such offenses would be able to petition the court for resentencing.
Federal funds would be used to create incentives for states to legalize recreational cannabis, and funding would be withheld for prison construction and staffing in states with disproportionately high minority arrest rates for marijuana possession. The Act would also create an investment fund for communities that have been hard hit by the War on Drugs, providing grants for library construction, health education, and a variety of other areas. The bill is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, but comes amid speculation that Booker is planning a presidential run in 2020.
Last week, it was also revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had sent letters to the governors of Washington and Colorado, expressing concerns over the efficacy of state marijuana regulation. Officials in Washington dismissed the letter addressed to Governor Jay Inslee, stating that Sessions relied in part on outdated information from a 2016 federal report on the state’s largely unregulated medical marijuana system, which it blamed for the growth of the state’s black market for cannabis.
Since the release of the 2016 report Washington’s medical cannabis system has been brought into line with the robust recreational regulatory structure. The letter to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper was likewise based on a 2016 Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area report, which claimed that Colorado-grown marijuana was turning up in bordering states and that cannabis-related traffic fatalities had increased significantly since legalization.
Some fear that the letters could foreshadow a federal crackdown on states that have legalized recreational marijuana, which remains illegal at the federal level. Sessions has expressed heavy skepticism over state legalization efforts, though he has largely left the Obama administration’s hands-off policy intact thus far.
Texas:
On Friday, a bill was introduced in the Texas Senate to expand access to medical marijuana in the state. Currently, only patients suffering from severe forms of epilepsy are allowed to be treated with cannabis. S.B. 79 would provide patients with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, cancer, and other “debilitating conditions” access to medical marijuana. Another, more comprehensive medical marijuana bill failed earlier in the session despite an unprecedented level of support.
