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Cannabis has a complicated history
in the United States. It is only through enlightenment that
this scourge can be wiped out. They both smoke pot. That's
jive talk for marijuana People who push drugs must be put in
jail for a minimum of 50 years. Someone caught, even with a small
amount, can be sent to prison. President Carter today came out for
an end to all federal criminal penalties for the possession of up
to one ounce of marijuana. Marijuana could very well be the
most dangerous threats to an entire generation of Americans of any
drug that we know. I experimented with marijuana at the time or
two, and I didn't like it and didn't inhale and never
tried it again. Sentiment about cannabis in the U.S. is tied up in feelings about
public health, race, crime and morality. And that complicated relationship makes
the rapid change in public sentiment toward decriminalizing and legalizing
the drug even more surprising. Every ballot initiative
involving the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana passed
in the 2020 election. Voters in New Jersey, Arizona and
South Dakota chose to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use. South Dakota and Mississippi voted
to legalize medical marijuana use. That means 15 states, along with
the District of Columbia, have legalized marijuana for adult recreational use. And 36 states and D.C. permit medical use of the drug. Now, a third of the country lives
in a state where medical marijuana is legal, with eight Republican senators
representing legal cannabis states. Additionally, the Democratic controlled
House of Representatives just passed the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment
and Expungement Act or the MORE Act. The bill would legalize
marijuana at the federal level and implement sweeping regulations and
reforms surrounding the drug. The 2020 election and the House
vote reveals something important about the shift in the marijuana debate. Marijuana may be one of the few
truly bipartisan issues in the United States right now, with 91 percent of
Americans saying it should be legal for medical use, including nearly
six in 10 Americans favoring legalization for both medical
and recreational use. Despite the long road marijuana
had in the U.S.. Legalization advocates think the government may
be on its way to be scheduling the drug after 50 years of
it being criminalized at the federal level. Here's how the U.S. ended up with a web of contradictory
marijuana policy and where the law might be headed from here. There has been a lengthy history of
cannabis in the United States that has generally followed two tracks,
medical and recreational. By the late eighteen hundreds, there were
a wide number of medicinal uses for cannabis. People used it as a
pain reliever to treat nausea and even to soothe the gums
of teething babies. Its role as a recreational substance is
about 100, 120 years old when migrants fleeing the dictatorship of Porfirio
Diaz in Mexico came to the U.S. and started settling
along the U.S. Mexico border. The migrants were able to recognize
cannabis use as a recreational substance, which was very different than
how Americans had been using the drug. And of course, this becomes immediately
an issue because it is a minority population that is currently
being demonized during this period. Nearly every state west of the
Mississippi River past anti marijuana legislation, and by 1933, about 30
states had outlawed marijuana for non-medical use. Congress passed the first federal
law that addressed recreational marijuana use in 1937 called
the Marijuana Tax Act. It didn't specifically
outlaw cannabis. Instead, it required anyone who grew
distributed or used marijuana to register with the federal government
and pay a small tax. What essentially that allowed the federal
government to do was to collect the names and identifying information of
everyone who is involved in the cannabis trade, making it easier to keep
an eye on them and essentially allow the government to
survey their activities. In the 1940s, World War
II made hemp patriotic. The military needed it to create
rope and other useful materials. With the end of the war, measures to
crack down on weed ramped up again. And with the counterculture of the 60s,
it became a symbol of protest. When Richard Nixon entered the Oval
Office in 1969, he made drug prohibition one of his main
priorities, culminating in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which created
a scheduling system for drugs. The system is based on two criteria
the drugs, medicinal value and the drug's potential for abuse. Schedule one drugs are considered to
have no medical value and high potential for abuse. The legislation gave the control
of determining which schedule drugs should fall under to Nixon's attorney
general, John Mitchell, rather than to a doctor such
as the surgeon general. When Nixon and Mitchell, both of
whom were adamantly opposed to marijuana use because they saw it tied
to the counterculture civil rights movement and the uprisings of the 60s when
they tried to put cannabis into Schedule one, they had a hard time convincing
Congress that that was where it should go in order to
reach an agreement with Congress. They said they would form a commission
to study marijuana in the U.S.. Nixon and Mitchell subsequently classified
marijuana as a Schedule One drug alongside heroin, LSD and ecstasy,
while the commission, which came to be known as the Shafer
Commission, set about studying marijuana. The report ended up contradicting that
decision, determining after a two year examination of marijuana users that
the drug did not cause the concerned side effects such as a
lack of motivation or increased aggression. Nixon refused to accept
these findings and kept marijuana classified as a Schedule one drug. But the commission's report
didn't go unnoticed. It became available to the public,
and many activists took it upon themselves to work to decriminalize the
drug at the state level. Between 1973 and 1978, a dozen
states across the country decriminalize marijuana, essentially making possession of up
to an ounce of cannabis, the equivalent of
a parking violation. But the decriminalization came to a
crashing halt in 1978 when concerned parents began pushing back. As decriminalization spread across the
country, so too did additional industries that aided in the
consumption of this decriminalized drug paraphernalia magazines,
movies, music. So a lot of the
products were available to children. And that was the crux of the problem. In the late 90s, public sentiment
surrounding marijuana use began to turn. In 1996, California became the first
state to legalize cannabis for medical use, and in 2012, Colorado and
Washington became the first states to legalize marijuana for
adult recreational use. 15 states and D.C. have followed suit since then, culminating
in the major wins for the legalization movement in 2020. The conflict between federal and state
laws pose challenges to cannabis businesses operating legally at
the state level. One of the biggest issues for businesses
is a lack of access to banking services, as well as the
inability to get loans. Anyone running a legal cannabis business,
according to state law, is still considered a criminal at
the federal level. That means banks, including state chartered
ones, are at risk of federal regulators deciding that the financial
institutions are violating money laundering laws. This means multimillion
dollar businesses have to function largely as
cash only enterprises. A big shift for the cannabis industry
came when the Justice Department in 2013 issued what is referred
to as the Cole memorandum. The memorandum provided a set
of criteria for states operating recreational and medical cannabis programs,
such as preventing diversion to the black market and protecting
minors and other vulnerable populations from accessing cannabis products. The Department of Justice had a policy
that if states could meet these standards, it would not enforce federal
marijuana law in those states. In January 2018, Attorney General
Jeff Sessions during President Donald Trump's administration rescinded
the Cole memorandum. After the recession of the
Cole memorandum, every single U.S. attorney in each state actually still
abided by that same criteria that was included in the Cole memorandum because
it was good policy and it made sense and it just wasn't
feasible to enforce federal law in the way that anyone in
the Trump administration had threatened to do. The criminalization of cannabis has led
to a large number of people being charged and incarcerated for possession
or trafficking of the drug. Pew Research Center found after analyzing data
from the FBI that four in 10 U.S. drug arrests in 2018
were for marijuana offenses. A 2020 ACLU analysis of FBI crime
data found that despite an increasing number of states legalizing or
decriminalizing marijuana, law enforcement made at least half a million marijuana
arrests in 2018, more than for any other drug. The report also found
that Black Americans were nearly four times more likely than white Americans
to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite the two groups using
the drug at the same rates. Between 2010 and 2018, marijuana arrests
in the United States trended downward slightly but rebounded
at several points. As of 2018, the national downward trend
appears to have leveled off, even as the number of states that
have legalized or decriminalize marijuana has increased. Maritza Perez is the national
affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that
advocates for complete legalization of marijuana. It continues to be one of
the main drivers of drug arrest - marijuana possession, that is,
and marijuana use. It continues to be
a driver of deportations. So it's a major criminal justice
issue that really has lifelong consequences for people
with convictions. But some have expressed concerns
around legalization for recreational use. Kevin Sabet is the president and CEO
of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a nonprofit organization that opposes
the commercialization and non-medical legalization of marijuana. So I think there's been a false dichotomy
over the last 20 or 30 years that pits legalization against incarceration or the
war on drugs, as if those were the only two options we have
for drug policy or for marijuana policy. And I think the reality is there
are far more innovative, cost effective, interesting policies that frankly are much
more in the middle and don't fall into the trappings of
either, you know, criminalizing especially certain groups that are disproportionately affected
or on the other hand, glamorizing, normalizing and commercializing
today's very high, potent marijuana, you know, sold by Big
Tobacco, Big Alcohol and Big Pharma. And we all sort of know how
that movie ends with those industries. Why would we want to have
marijuana follow the same suits? We think that in order to really
have a framework around drug policy that's built in equity, you need to
account for the legalization component because legalization often means that
you're regulating the drug. So decriminalization is great
at the start. But, you know, I think full legalization
is really how we get issues surrounding equity. I personally believe our
goal should be to discourage use, not encourage use. It's hard to discourage use if there's
a pot shop on every corner and selling really nicely looking glamorous items
that promise the world in terms of how they
make you feel, etc.. I think people need to realize that
the interest that big tobacco and big alcohol have in
the marijuana industry. This isn't about Cheech and Chong
or mom and pop stores. This is about a major industry that
is being taken over by the alcohol industry and by the tobacco industry. So I just don't see how this is
going to be helpful for anybody when these big interests take over. The needle has moved enough on
public opinion that the House of Representatives made the historic move
toward legalizing marijuana at the federal level with the passage of the
more act, the more act would not only remove marijuana from the list
of controlled substances, but would also address criminal justice reform
by allowing the expungement and resentencing of
marijuana convictions. The legislation would also tax the
marijuana industry in order to fund social programs that would invest
resources into communities that have been most impacted
by marijuana prohibition. And the taxes would also
provide support to underrepresented communities trying to enter
the cannabis industry. Even if marijuana legalization and
decriminalization seem like bipartisan issues at the ballot box,
Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Washington still seem far
apart on the issue. The MORE act passed in the House
along party lines, with five Republicans voting in favor of the bill
and six Democrats voting against it. To me, I don't really take that
as an indicator of, you know, Republicans being against the policy itself. I think a lot of them behind closed
doors will say that they think that we need to legalize marijuana. I think the problem with many
Republicans in terms of MORE Act specifically, they are reluctant to impose
a five percent and then eight percent tax. And then there are various
aspects of the bill that they would want to amend because it
provides too much regulatory oversight by the federal government. The MORE Act
couldn't be passed during the regular session of Congress because
it's so controversial. So it was passed during the lame duck
session, but I don't really see this as having much momentum going
forward with the new Congress. There are still many Democrats that are
uneasy with the idea of the MORE Act. And I think there are
ways where we can decriminalize marijuana without opening up with the MORE Act to
do, which is create a new huge for profit industry. It was pure, unadulterated, for
profit, really irresponsible and reckless, full legalization of
high THC products. So I don't really see it going
forward further than it already has. The MORE Act is not expected to be
taken up by the Senate this term. But Perez still thinks the passage of
the bill in the House sets a precedent for policy
advocacy going forward. We knew that this would you know, there's
no way that this is going to go through the Senate this year.
But that wasn't the goal. The goal was to have a marker
bill where the House of Representatives had to take a vote on this issue
and we can see where they landed. Also, we wanted to just let it be known
that if it's not the MORE Act, if it's less than that, like it's just
not a marijuana bill that Congress should be wasting their time on. President elect Joe Biden and Vice
President elect Kamala Harris might disagree on marijuana policy. Biden has said that he is in
favor of decriminalizing the drug and has embraced legalization for
medical use. He has not come out in favor
of legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use at the federal level and prefers
to reschedule the drug rather than descheduling it entirely. Harris, however, sponsored the MORE Act in
the Senate and has taken a much more progressive stance
on marijuana legalization. When Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris, I
know that he knew what she stands for. He strategically made that pick because
I think that he feels like he has a lot of work to do, at
least on the criminal justice end, given his background on those issues, as I do
think that she could perhaps push him on this issue, if not at
least begin to educate them.