Politics
Congress Will Consider Lots Of Marijuana Amendments Next Week
Almost a dozen cannabis-related amendments will be considered by a key congressional committee next week.
The House Rules Committee published the submitted measures on Thursday. They cover everything from preventing the Justice Department from interfering in state legal marijuana programs to funding the creation of a regulatory pathway for CBD to be introduced into the food supply to shifting Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) funds to substance abuse prevention and education programs.
Here’s a rundown of what’s being proposed as part of a large-scale appropriations bill to fund parts of the federal government for Fiscal Year 2020.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) reintroduced an amendment that would bar the Justice Department from using its funds to prevent states “from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of marijuana.” The measure, which goes beyond an existing rider that protects only local medical cannabis laws by also including all adult-use states, is similar to an amendment that came just nine flipped votes short of passage on the House floor in 2015.
“In 2014, we successfully passed amendments to protect state cannabis programs,” Blumenauer told Marijuana Moment, referring to when the current medical marijuana protections were first enacted. “It’s now 2019. It’s past time to protect all cannabis programs, including adult-use.”
Interestingly, the amendment covers states with cannabis laws but does not cover Washington, D.C. or U.S. territories that have enacted legalization. To that end, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) filed a separate measure that also covers the District of Columbia and the territories.
And Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) introduced another amendment that would fix the fact that the U.S. Virgin Islands, which enacted a medical cannabis law this year, was inadvertently left out of the overall funding bill’s existing medical cannabis protection rider.
Blumenauer also introduced four other measures aimed at extending protections to tribal areas that allow marijuana in some form: one that prohibits the Justice Department from spending money to interfere in any tribal marijuana programs, another for tribal marijuana programs within states where it’s legal, one that applies to tribal medical cannabis programs in states with such programs and one that would broadly protect tribal medical cannabis programs regardless of surrounding state laws.
The congressman, who is one of the leading advocates for marijuana reform in Congress, didn’t stop there.
He also filed a measure to prohibit the Justice Department from prosecuting or penalizing U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) workers “for filing out paperwork in compliance with State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
The VA, on the other hand, would be blocked under a separate amendment Blumenauer filed from punishing its doctors for that activity, otherwise preventing veterans from participating in a state-legal medical cannabis program or denying their benefits due to such participation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), whose amendment meant to expand research into psychedelics in a separate spending bill was rejected on the House floor on Thursday, introduced another bold drug reform measure she is seeking to attach to the new spending legislation.
The congresswoman proposed diverting $5 million in DEA enforcement funds “to the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program in keeping with the growing consensus to treat drug addiction as a public health issue,” a summary of the amendment states. (She initially proposed shifting $30 million between the accounts but scaled that back in a revised version.)
Under the spending legislation as it stands now, DEA funding for next year would be almost $90 million above what was appropriated in the 2019 fiscal year and roughly $78 million more than what was requested by President Donald Trump.
Another interesting amendment concerns Food and Drug Administration (FDA) funding. While the text of the measure, introduced by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA), doesn’t explicitly mention the purpose of the spending proposal, its summary stipulates that it’s meant to fund a “process to make lawful a safe level for conventional foods and dietary supplements containing Cannabidiol (CBD) so long as the products are compliant with all other FDA rules and regulations.”
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said repeatedly that Congress may have to pass legislation to provide for the lawful marketing of hemp-derived CBD, which was legalized in the 2018 Farm Bill, in the food supply. Existing FDA policies would force the department to develop alternative pathways to that end.
Also of interest to drug policy reformers is a measure proposed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that would block the Department of Justice from spending money to prohibit states and localities from establishing and implementing safe consumption sites for illegal substances. The department is currently suing to stop a proposed facility from opening in Philadelphia.
There are at least two anti-drug amendments that run counter to the objectives of reform advocates. Both of them, filed by Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), propose that U.S. Department of Agriculture funds included in the spending legislation should be restricted or withheld unless the head of the agency testifies before Congress that resources won’t go toward individuals participating or applying for benefits unless they’ve undergone drug testing.
This year has seen a deluge of drug reform legislation being pursued through the appropriations process, especially in recent weeks.
Besides Ocasio-Cotez’s psychedelics research amendment, committee reports attached to funding legislation have touched on issues such as CBD regulations, hemp policy implementation, preventing impaired driving, safeguarding veteran benefits and urging the federal government to reevaluate employment policies for federal workers who use marijuana in accordance with state law.
Also, earlier this week the House Appropriations Committee advanced spending legislation that contains an amendment to protect banks that service cannabis businesses and excludes a longstanding rider blocking Washington, D.C. from using local funds to legalize and regulate cannabis sales.
The Rules Committee will decide next week which of the new pending amendments will be cleared for floor votes when the House takes up the overall spending legislation. This week the panel blocked a measure that would have prevented the Department of Education from punishing colleges and universities for allowing medical marijuana on campus, citing procedural issues.
Chairman James McGovern (D-MA) has said that he generally will not impede cannabis amendments filed in proper order from advancing, however, unlike former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who consistently blocked marijuana proposals from coming to the floor when he held the panel’s gavel in recent years.
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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
