Marijuana legalization is popular in America. In contrast, President Joe Biden is unpopular. No wonder efforts are being made in Biden’s reelection campaign to paint him as supportive of liberalizing marijuana policy. There is just one problem, over Biden’s three-plus years as president he has done zilch to end the United States government’s marijuana prohibition.
Tag: Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act
United States Senate member Cory Booker (D-NJ) says Republican gains in the US Congress in the midterm election mean the lame duck session ending in January is crunch time for passing national marijuana legalization. “So it’s either now, or it might be many years from now” for legalization, concluded Booker in a post-election interview at NJ Spotlight News.
Why hasn’t the United States Congress sent to President Joe Biden legislation to end the US government’s war on marijuana already? We are over four years into about two-thirds of Americans supporting marijuana legalization and majority support being reached among Republicans. Yet, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives and Senate keeps failing to take the steps needed for Congress to deliver legalization legislation to the president. Why?
A year ago, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was pointing out that the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act being used by Democratic leadership in the United States House of Representatives as the vehicle for marijuana legalization was actually delaying progress toward marijuana legalization on the national level. If the Democratic leadership really wants to end the US government’s marijuana prohibition, Massie argued, it should ditch the MORE Act with its extraneous provisions that turn off most Republican House members and even some Democrat House members and instead bring to the House floor a “straight up clean” bill eliminating the US government’s criminalization of activities related to marijuana.
The Democratic leadership did not follow Massie’s advice last year. Instead, it kept pushing the MORE Act, resulting in the bill passing in the Democratic-majority House in a very partisan vote but going nowhere in the then-Republican-majority Senate. In the new Congress begun this year, the House’s Democratic leadership is again pushing the virtually Democrats only MORE Act, designated as HR 3617 this Congress. It makes one wonder if the power behind the scenes either thinks the new razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate will deliver approval of the bill or, it seems more likely, thinks it is fine to score political points with the very partisan bill while ensuring the US government’s marijuana prohibition stays in place.
Over the last two years, I have been writing about how the congressional Democratic leadership has stood in the way of the bipartisan effort that would be needed to adopt marijuana legalization at the national level. It has done so by choosing as its legalization vehicle the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act that features race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies that ensure that nearly no Republican congressional members will support the bill. The strategy has allowed Democrats in Congress to continue to bluster in favor of marijuana legalization while making no progress toward legalization becoming reality.
Over the last two years, I wrote several times regarding the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, a bill that sought to legalize marijuana on the national level in a way that appeared to ensure almost no Republican House of Representatives or Senate members would support it. In particular, I pointed out how Republican legislators would tend to dislike the bill’s race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies.