Senate leaders are asking fellow lawmakers to weigh in on the provisions of a bill to federally legalize marijuana that they plan to file in the coming weeks that “aims to right the wrongs of the past and ensure that the federal government is matching the advancements made in states across the country.”Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once famously said that the states are America’s laboratories of democracy,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote in a letter to colleagues on Thursday. “When it comes to reforming the nation’s antiquated cannabis laws, he could not have been more right.” “This is an issue of individual freedom and basic fairness that clearly transcends party lines,” they said. “However, one major hurdle continues to stand in the way of states’ ability to make their own decisions about cannabis—the continued prohibition of marijuana at the federal level. As more and more states move to legalize cannabis for both adult and medical use, the federal government has an important role to play. Hundreds of millions of Americans live in states that have legalized cannabis in some form while it remains illegal at the federal level.”
Kyle Jaeger, Marijuana Moment, 02/10/2022 10:16:00