Top ten reasons to legalize marijuana

Are you one of the almost 57 million Americans living in a state that’s voting on marijuana legalization this Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016?  Your vote YES may help end the criminality of marijuana for over one out of six Americans, bringing the total to almost one out of four Americans who will live in a legal state.
Here are the ten best reasons to help convince your friends and family to do the right thing and vote YES on legalization:

1)   Legalized Marijuana is Safer than Alcohol and Tobacco
How did we end up in a society where the two most damaging drugs—alcohol and tobacco—are the two legal ones? There are over a half-million deaths annually from those two substances. They also lead to countless illnesses and injuries that affect society in health-care costs, lost productivity, and law-enforcement expenses.
Marijuana is non-toxic and has never caused a fatal overdose in over 7,000 years of recorded human use. Its greatest harm is the arrest, incarceration, and lifelong hurdles created by prohibition. Opponents worry about “putting a third legal drug on the menu,” as if marijuana isn’t already the third-most popular drug used in America. It’s already on the menu; you just have to commit a crime to order it.

2)   Marijuana Prohibition is a Costly Failure
Next year is the 80th anniversary of the Marihuana Tax Act, our first nationwide attempt to suppress pot smoking. Back then, maybe a few hundred thousand people nationwide were “smoking reefers”. Today, it’s more likely than not that someone under age 50 has tried pot and there are over 30 million Americans consuming cannabis on a regular basis—whether it is “on the menu” or not.

The costs of this counter-productive prohibition are staggering. Since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, over 25 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana violations, costing us over $1 trillion to prosecute. But in the four states that have legalized, marijuana arrests have plummeted, crime has decreased, and youth use hasn’t budged.

3)   Marijuana Prohibition Funds Gangs, Cartels, & Terrorists
The drug trade has long been a source of income for organized crime. But now that four states have legalized marijuana; their domestic product is beating imported Mexican marijuana in both price and quality. Mexican farmers growing for the vicious violent drug cartels have seen their returns drop from $100 per kilo to under $25.

Legalization isn’t going to put the cartels out of business—they’re criminals who will turn to other crimes for their funding. But we can take from them the market for the most widely-used drug and shrink their customer base substantially.
Heres another way to look at it: Why should we continue to give business opportunities to violent criminals who don’t pay taxes and follow no regulations?

4)   Marijuana Prohibition Hurts Youth & Minorities Most
America is coming to grips with institutional racism in our criminal-justice system. Marijuana prohibition has been a prime factor in fueling that racism. African-Americans are four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana violations, even though they use and sell marijuana at about the same rates.
Marijuana prohibition sets up an incentive for police to make easy arrests and reap forfeiture and drug grant dollars. This, in turn, leads police to concentrate on minority neighborhoods where pot smokers are more easily caught and have fewer resources to fight the charges. This contributes to the cycle of distrust between minority communities and the police. Legalization won’t fix bad racist cops, but it will provide them far less opportunity to act on their racism.

5)   Legalized Marijuana Protects Kids Better Than Prohibition
For the past forty years, the Monitoring the Future survey has asked high school seniors how easy it would be for them to get a bag of pot. For forty years, the answer has consistently been between 80 to 91 percent of them claiming access to marijuana was either “easy” or “fairly easy.” That’s because weed dealers don’t check ID and don’t lose a license if they’re caught selling to a kid.
Nothing’s ever going to stop a determined kid from finding a joint, any more than kids today aren’t completely stopped from accessing alcohol and tobacco. But with those drugs, somewhere along the line a corrupt adult had to be involved. Now, kids sell weed to other kids. Legalization moves weed sales into secure, adults-only stores and reduces the profit potential for illegal sales. (When’s the last time you saw a high school tequila dealer?) Last year, with four legalized states, was the first year ever that “easy” access to weed for 12th graders dropped below 80 percent.

6)   Legalized Marijuana is a Safe Therapeutic Supplement
While half the states have initiated protections for medical use of marijuana, that doesn’t legalize the use of marijuana by patients. Even in California, where nearly anybody can get a medical marijuana recommendation and possession of less than an ounce is just a $100 ticket, there are still over 2,000 people a year who go to jail for marijuana alone, serving an average of over five months in a cage.
That’s because doctor’s visits and medical cards cost money; it costs upwards of $400 in some states to qualify and register for a medical marijuana card. Why should a disabled person in poverty or a sick person suffering a condition not covered by law be treated as a criminal for using an herb safer than over-the-counter aspirin or cough syrup?

7)   Legalized Marijuana Replaces Toxic, Addictive Pharmaceuticals
America is suffering from an opioid overdose epidemic. Legal pharmaceutical drugs kill more people annually than all illegal drugs combined. Marijuana is an herb one can grow at little cost and use to replace over 17 popular pharmaceutical medications. Legalizing marijuana will literally save the lives of countless patients.
The pharmaceutical industry knows this. That’s why Big Pharma has been funding anti-pot campaigns. This election, one of them, Insys Pharmaceuticals, has donated a half-million dollars to defeat legalization in Arizona. They’re a maker of Fentanyl, the opioid painkiller that took Prince’s life and is 100 times more powerful that heroin, and are seeking patents on synthetic cannabinoid drugs they’re researching.

8)   Legalized Marijuana Opens the Possibilities of Industrial Hemp
The demonization of marijuana is so entrenched in America that we even ban the non-psychoactive variety known as industrial hemp. We are one of the few countries in the world engaged in the lunacy of banning a plant because it looks like one that gets you high.
It’s a little like banning powdered sugar because it resembles cocaine!
While many states have passed laws allowing for industrial hemp cultivation and the federal government has passed laws allowing that to happen, these are all work-arounds for a crop that our Founding Fathers grew freely and copiously. Marijuana legalization will help open up the uses of hemp from food to fuel, fiber to medicine, building material to revolutionary energy technologies and more.

9)   Legalized Marijuana Raises Millions in New Tax Revenue
Legalization doesn’t invent marijuana; it just recognizes that it is a popular commodity that should be taxed and regulated like all other commodities. The market for marijuana is never going to go away; we can only determine who controls most of it—taxpaying, job-creating, law-abiding businesses, or murderous, police-corrupting, criminal cartels.
Prohibition doesn’t control marijuana—prohibition is the absence of control. States under prohibition gain nothing from it and spend money, time, and resources enforcing it. The four states that have legalized marijuana have already reaped over $200 million in combined tax revenue, while saving money in the police department, courts, prisons, parole and probation offices, and other agencies that are burdened by pot prosecutions.

10)Legalized Marijuana Works!
It’s not 2009 anymore. Legalization of marijuana isn’t some hypothetical policy proposal—we’ve done it already in four other states. We had some initial difficulties concerning kids and edibles, but those have been addressed through education, labeling, and packaging changes the newly-legalizing states will adopt as well. Meanwhile, the older folks that legalization was intended for have increased their use substantially.
But despite putting legal marijuana “on the menu,” the roads are safer than ever, overall driving fatalities are down, workplace productivity is up, problematic dependence on marijuana is unchanged, and millions of dollars in tax revenue are rolling in. In Colorado alone, legalization has created over 18,000 jobs and contributed over $2.5 billion to the state economy.

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Pro-marijuana bills gaining momentum in Congress

Rep. Matt Gaetz calls himself a "constitutional conservative." Joining other Republicans in rolling back environmental regulations wasn't enough for the 34-year-old freshman congressman from a conservative district in Florida. Not long after arriving on Capitol Hill, Gaetz introduced a bill that would get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency altogether.

That bill generated headlines but remains stuck in committee, and now Gaetz is looking to make another splash with a completely different issue: marijuana. Earlier this week, his office tweeted infographics listing different diseases that are treated with medical marijuana and posted another graphic detailing the social costs of marijuana prohibition on Facebook. The posts suggested that Gaetz and Rep. Darren Soto (D), a fellow Floridian, are preparing to introduce legislation that would take marijuana off the federal government's Schedule I list of drugs considered too dangerous to be legal for any purpose, including medicine.

Expanding access to marijuana is certainly not on the GOP's agenda, and has never been a top priority among congressional Democrats either. So, why is a self-described conservative sticking up for medical weed?

For years, even liberal lawmakers told marijuana advocates that while reform may be a good idea, the political will to make it happen did not exist, at least at the federal level. That is all starting to change now that legalization is becoming increasingly popular in the polls and more states are moving ahead with reforms, despite the Trump administration's pledges to crack down on illicit drugs, potentially including marijuana.

Gaetz is expected to propose placing marijuana on the government's Schedule II list, where it would still be considered to have a "high potential for abuse" but also accepted medical uses. Opioids such as fentanyl and morphine are currently categorized as Schedule II drugs. Marijuana is, of course, far less dangerous than morphine. Justin Strekal, the political director at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said placing marijuana on Schedule II is timid compared others proposed reforms, but it's an encouraging sign.

"A Republican from Florida directing their office staff to make little memes about medical marijuana [on social media]…that's a good thing to see," Strekal told Truthout.

Will Jeff Sessions Target Legal Weed?

Gaetz, who previously ushered limited medical cannabis measures through the Florida legislature, is not the only lawmaker working on weed policy. Congress recently saw the creation of a bipartisan "Cannabis Caucus" along with a flurry of proposed marijuana reforms, including two bills that would legalize marijuana nationwide. Voters in eight states approved ballot measures legalizing either recreational or medical weed in last November's election, and legislation to decriminalize or legalize marijuana is on the move in cities and states across the country.

These efforts come amid widespread speculation over how Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the outspoken marijuana prohibitionist that President Trump picked to roll out his "law and order" agenda at the Justice Department, will proceed.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and both Sessions and the White House have sent mixed messages about federal marijuana enforcement, raising fears about a possible crackdown in states where the drug is legal for recreational use. On Thursday, Sessions issued a memo asking a new crime reduction task force created by the White House to review federal policies on marijuana enforcement and report back to him by July, providing advocates with a time frame in which to expect further policy moves by the Trump administration.

Under President Obama, the Justice Department adopted a policy that generally prevented federal raids on marijuana businesses that comply with state laws, while continuing to target unlicensed marijuana operations. As a result, the number of federal prison sentences for marijuana violations has dropped dramatically since 2012, according to NORML. Still, 3,000 people -- the overwhelming majority of them people of color -- received federal sentences in 2016 alone.

Sessions has called the Obama-era policy "valid" and may choose not to scrap it, but advocates warn that the attorney general has plenty of leeway to disrupt state-legal markets as long as marijuana remains prohibited at the federal level. The uncertainty has left states with legal marijuana programs anxious. On Monday, the governors of Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington sent a letter to the Justice Department asking Sessions to consult with them before making any changes to the policy established under Obama.

States that have legalized weed are now considering so-called "sanctuary" legislation to protect their legitimate marijuana businesses from the Trump administration. Last week, California Rep. Reggie Jones-Sawyer introduced a bill in the state's legislature that would bar state and local agencies from teaming up with federal law enforcement to take action against legitimate marijuana businesses, unless they receive a court order. Medical marijuana has been legal in California for years, and last year voters approved a ballot initiative for recreational use.

"I want to stop law enforcement from impeding on one of the best businesses we can start for the next millennium," Jones-Sawyer told reporters last week.

The Trump administration has indicated that it is not interested in going after medical cannabis, and Colorado lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow recreational marijuana businesses to reclassify their products as medical products "due to change in local, state or federal law enforcement policy."

"In the grand scheme of things, I think Sessions is [a] new catalyst for urgency for states and Congress to take action," Strekal said.

Congress Considers a Flurry of Marijuana Bills

In Congress, the legislation currently receiving the most attention is the Marijuana Revenue and Regulation Act, a bill recently introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) that would remove marijuana from drug scheduling entirely and set up a basic federal taxation and regulatory structure, allowing states to establish their own polices free from interference by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The bill is part of a package from the Cannabis Caucus that would shield individual consumers from federal prosecution and remove tax and criminal penalties that have made it difficult for marijuana businesses to access banking and other financial services.

Perhaps the most important legislation for marijuana advocates is a bill and a separate pair of budget amendments that would protect states with legal weed from federal prosecution. The proposals are designed to stop Sessions from targeting states with legal weed, even if Trump's crime task force decides that a crackdown is a good idea.

A budget amendment preventing federal prosecution of state-legal medical marijuana activities passed last year, but another amendment protecting recreational marijuana narrowly failed. Strekal said the recreational measure, which was also introduced by Rep. Polis, has a much better chance this year now that more states have passed legalization measures. However, as a budget rider, it's only good for one year. That leaves Congress with more work to do if legalized states are to be protected from the Trump administration over the course of his term.

"We absolutely expect to see advancement of legislation in Congress, but will it be the end of prohibition in this Congress? Probably not," Strekal said. "But we are cautiously optimistic about a swelling of political will behind this."

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Make the DEA commissioner resign over medical marijuana comments

Last week, the acting chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration called medical marijuana "a joke" during a Q&A with reporters. Now, medical marijuana patients are calling for his head, with an online petition demanding his resignation attracting over 10,000 signatures on change.org.

Here's what administrator Chuck Rosenberg said about medical marijuana, via CBS News:

"What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal -- because it's not," Rosenberg said in a briefing to reporters. "We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don't call it medicine -- that is a joke."

"There are pieces of marijuana -- extracts or constituents or component parts -- that have great promise" medicinally, he said. "But if you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana -- which is what people are talking about when they talk about medicinal marijuana -- it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine."

Rosenberg's argument that smoking marijuana "has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine" has been contradicted by numerous studies. A meta-analysis of 79 medical marijuana studies involving 6,462 patients, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year, found "moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity." There was low-quality evidence suggesting marijuana had therapeutic applications for other conditions as well.

The finding that marijuana is effective at treating chronic pain is a big deal. High-caliber prescription painkillers are highly addictive and potentially deadly when misused -- they killed over 16,000 people via overdose in 2013, according to the CDC. Numerous studies have found that at the state level, the availability of medical marijuana is associated with a significant reduction of painkiller abuse rates and overdose deaths -- presumably, as patients opt to treat their pain with marijuana rather than painkillers.

Rosenberg's statements about medical marijuana aren't surprising when you consider that they comport with the official position of the DEA. The Administration considers marijuana a "Schedule 1" controlled substance, which among other things means it has "no currently accepted medical use." Most researchers reject this claim, however, with organizations including Brookings Institution, the American Medical Association, and the ACLU arguing that the current designation is inappropriate.

Given all this, marijuana advocates are furious at what they see as the DEA's dismissal of the science behind medical pot.

"My mom is a legal patient in Rhode Island, and she uses medical marijuana to deal with the severe pain she experiences from multiple sclerosis," said Tom Angell, chairman of the group Marijuana Majority, which started the petition. "Medical cannabis is no joke to my family or the millions of other American families who have seen its real benefits."

In an e-mailed statement, a DEA spokesperson sought to clarify Rosenberg's remarks. "To clarify, Acting Administrator Rosenberg indicated that marijuana should be subject to the same levels of approval and scrutiny as any other substance intended for use as a medicine. DEA supports efforts to research potential medical uses of marijuana. To this end, DEA has never denied a registration request from anyone conducting marijuana research using FDA approved protocols."

The spokesman added, "acting Administrator Rosenberg was also clear to point out there are a number of marijuana components and/or extracts which appear to show promise as medicines, but have not yet been approved as safe and effective. His comments reflected the fact that FDA has not approved any medicinal uses for smoked marijuana."

This wouldn't be the first time Rosenberg has courted controversy over marijuana during his tenure as DEA administrator. Over the summer, he said that marijuana was "probably not" as dangerous as heroin, and then one week later clarified that "heroin is clearly more dangerous than marijuana." For the record, over 8,200 people died from heroin in 2013, compared to zero known marijuana overdose deaths.

The previous DEA chief, Michele Leonhart, had a rocky relationship with the Obama administration as well -- especially when it came to drug policy issues, which she often criticized the administration on. Leonhart left her post under a cloud of scandal earlier this year, prompting cheers from drug policy reform advocates and hopes that her successor would change the DEA's tone on certain drug policy issues.

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It depends on how you look at it

The Marijuana Industry Pulls Victory From the Jaws of a DEA Defeat

Despite the DEA's failure to reschedule marijuana, the cannabis industry has plenty of positives to look forward to.

Sean Williams
(TMFUltraLong)

Aug 28, 2016 at 9:11AM

August began with plenty of promise for the marijuana industry, but those high hopes went up in smoke on Aug. 11, when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency released its long-awaited decision on whether it would reclassify marijuana.

The DEA denies the marijuana industry a victory

For months, the marijuana industry, cannabis supporters, and medical patients had hoped that the U.S. regulatory agency, with the recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services, would reschedule marijuana from its current status of Schedule 1 -- which deems it an illicit drug with no accepted medical use -- to Schedule 2. This would have recognized that cannabis has an accepted medical benefit, and it would have allowed physicians around the country to prescribe medical marijuana to patients with very specific ailments.

However, the decision by the DEA denied the two petitions seeking to reschedule the still-illicit drug. The DEA leaned on three points in its explanation of the decision.

First, the DEA believes marijuana has a high potential for abuse. Both the evaluation from the Department of Health and Human Services and the DEA's own observations appeared to confirm that.

Second, the DEA pointed out that cannabis has no currently accepted medical use, listing five reasons why that is. Most notably, the drug's chemistry isn't known and reproducible, and there are no well-controlled studies to back up cannabis supporters' claims that it can treat pain, epilepsy, or any other number of ailments.

Finally, the agency believes marijuana lacks an acceptable safety profile. Without any approved cannabis products, the benefits of marijuana don't appear to outweigh its risks.

For these reasons, marijuana will continue to remain a Schedule 1 drug, and approvals at the medical and recreational level will still be conducted at the state level. The ruling took the wind out of the sails of supporters.

But the marijuana industry succeeds anyway

However, it's not all bad news for the cannabis industry. The DEA's decision came with one notable caveat that will allow for easier access into medical marijuana research. Currently, the only approved grow farm in the U.S. is in Mississippi. New regulations could open the door for researchers to gain easier access to cannabis for medical research. Presumably, the sooner researchers can present a series of well-controlled studies on cannabis to the Food and Drug Administration and/or the DEA, the better chance they'll have of getting the latter to reclassify marijuana in the future.

Even more recently, on Aug. 16, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the cannabis industry by protecting legal recreational and medical marijuana users against federal prosecution. In effect, the 3-0 verdict by the federal court prevents the federal government from providing funding for the prosecution of recreational or medical marijuana users in states where recreational or medical marijuana is legal. With nine states set to vote on whether to legalize cannabis this November, millions of Americans could soon be protected from federal prosecution, according to this ruling. It should be noted that the Appeals Court could change its mind at any time. But for the time being, federal prosecutors will have better ways to spend their money than prosecuting consumers who are using marijuana in accordance with their states' laws.

There's also a bright side to the DEA's decision. Had the DEA rescheduled cannabis, the substance could have been exposed to a laundry list of FDA regulations. For example, the FDA could have placed requirements on packaging and marketing, or it could have demanded consistent levels of THC from each crop of marijuana. Even more importantly, FDA oversight may have forced the cannabis industry to run clinical trials in order to demonstrate the efficacy of the drug for treating certain ailments. These added costs could have put smaller players out of business and essentially handed the industry over to bigger businesses. Given less competition and more regulation, legal marijuana prices would likely rise rapidly.

In other words, marijuana's DEA defeat is, in many ways, a victory.

The lone loser of the DEA decision

Perhaps the biggest loser here is the individual investor looking to take advantage of the marijuana industry's incredible growth.

According to ArcView Market Research, a cannabis research firm, legal marijuana sales hit $5.4 billion in 2015, and they're slated to grow by roughly 30% per year throughout the remainder of the decade. If this trend were to continue, then legal marijuana sales would total nearly $22 billion by 2020. An investment that could grow at 30% per year for five straight years is a real rarity for stock investors, so you can imagine how closely some investors are watching the marijuana industry. Unfortunately, keeping cannabis as a Schedule 1 substance will probably keep big business from gaining substantial market share within the industry. This leaves investors little to no opportunity to profit from the growing legal marijuana market.

Making matters worse for investors is the fact that the vast majority of publicly traded marijuana stocks are penny stocks that trade on over-the-counter exchanges. While reporting standards are improving on the OTC exchanges, it can still be difficult to get accurate financial information on cannabis stocks. Nonetheless, losses remain common among marijuana stocks, and that's all the more reason to watch the advancement of the industry safely from the sidelines.

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The way I see it is we got jacked around. I've got something for the DEA and I would appreciate your help in sending them a message to obey the will of the people.

These ‘Path To Marijuana Reform’ Bills Can Make Cannabis Legal Nationally

Two Oregon Democratic lawmakers on Thursday introduced an aggressive package of bills that aims to protect existing state marijuana laws while at the same time paving the way for the federal regulation of the burgeoning cannabis industry.

Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Earl Blumenauer introduced The Path to Marijuana Reform Act, which permit states to create and regulate their own regulatory policies free from federal interference. The bold legislation also calls for removing cannabis from the U.S. Controlled Substances Act.

“The federal government must respect the decision Oregonians made at the polls and allow law-abiding marijuana businesses to go to the bank just like any other legal business.” Wyden said. “This three-step approach will spur job growth and boost our economy all while ensuring the industry is being held to a fair standard.”

The three steps Wyden refers to are clearly outlined in the proposal:

Small Business Tax Equity Act

This legislation would repeal the tax penalty that singles out state-legal marijuana businesses and bars them from claiming deductions and tax credits.

Responsibly Addressing The Marijuana Policy Gap Act

This legislation would reduce the gap between Federal and State law by removing federal criminal penalties and civil asset forfeiture for individuals and businesses acting in compliance with state law. It would also reduce barriers for state-legal marijuana businesses by ensuring access to banking, bankruptcy protection, marijuana research, and advertising. It would protect individual marijuana consumers in states that have legalized marijuana, by providing an expungement process for certain marijuana violations, ensuring access to public housing and federal financial aid for higher education, and ensuring that a person cannot be deported or denied entry to the U.S. solely for consuming marijuana in compliance with state law. Finally, it would remove unfair burdens by ensuring veterans have access to state-legal medical marijuana, and protecting Native American tribes from punishment under federal marijuana laws.


Marijuana Revenue And Regulation Act

This legislation would responsibly deschedule, tax, and regulate marijuana. It would impose an excise tax on marijuana products similar to current federal excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, escalating annually to a top rate equal to 25 percent of the sales price. Marijuana producers, importers, and wholesalers would be required to obtain a permit from the Department of Treasury, and the marijuana industry would be regulated in a manner similar to alcohol. Strict rules would prohibit sale or distribution of marijuana in states where it is illegal under state law.

The legislation “is another sign that the growing public support for ending our failed war on cannabis consumers nationwide is continuing to translate into political support amongst federal officials,” said Erik Altieri, executive director of NORML, a top marijuana reform group. “With marijuana legalization being supported by 60 percent of all Americans while Congress’ approval rating is in the low teens, ending our country’s disastrous prohibition against marijuana would not just be good policy, but good politics.”

Oregon is one of eight states where adult recreational marijuana is legal. There are 29 states that have medical marijuana programs. More than 60 million Americans over the age of 21 live in states that allow some form of marijuana consumption. And poll after poll consistently shows that about 60 percent of Americans support legalization of cannabis.

“Too many people are trapped between federal and state laws,” Blumenauer said. “It’s not right, and it’s not fair. We need change now – and this bill is the way to do it.”

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This is great. Let your Representative and Senators know about these reforms. Let them know you back them and that you want them to back them as well. The more of us they hear from the better.

Congressman introduce bills to legalize marijuana

Two congressmen filed separate House bills on Friday that together would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana at the federal level, effectively ending the U.S. government's decadeslong prohibition of the plant.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) introduced the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act, which would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act's schedules, transfer oversight of the substance from the Drug Enforcement Administration over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and regulate marijuana in a way similar to how alcohol is currently regulated in the U.S.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced the Marijuana Tax Revenue Act, which would set up a federal excise tax for regulated marijuana.

The bills would not force states to legalize marijuana, but a federal regulatory framework would be in place for those states that do decide to legalize it. To date, four states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana (however, D.C.'s model continues to ban sales), 23 states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes and 11 other states have legalized the limited use of low-THC forms of marijuana for medical use.

"While President Obama and the Justice Department have allowed the will of voters in states like Colorado and 22 other jurisdictions to move forward, small business owners, medical marijuana patients, and others who follow state laws still live with the fear that a new administration -- or this one -- could reverse course and turn them into criminals," Polis said in a statement Friday. "It is time for us to replace the failed prohibition with a regulatory system that works and let states and municipalities decide for themselves if they want, or don't want, to have legal marijuana within their borders."

Despite the programs currently in place in Colorado and Washington state -- as well as those that will soon go into effect in Oregon, Alaska and D.C. -- the sale, possession, production and distribution of marijuana all remain illegal under federal law. The states that have legalized marijuana or softened penalties for possession have only been able to do so because of federal guidance urging prosecutors to refrain from targeting state-legal marijuana operations.

With marijuana legalization supported by a majority of Americans, and a new wave of states considering loosening their marijuana laws over the next several years, it seems unlikely that the federal government would push back against the popular movement. But it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Harvard economist Jeff Miron, a vocal supporter of marijuana policy reform, highlighted the precarious nature of state marijuana laws in a recent op-ed for CNN on why Congress needs to act now on federal marijuana policy.

"Despite the compelling case for legalization, and progress toward legalization at the state level, ultimate success is not assured," Miron wrote. "Federal law still prohibits marijuana, and existing jurisprudence (Gonzales v. Raich 2005) holds that federal law trumps state law when it comes to marijuana prohibition. So far, the federal government has mostly taken a hands-off approach to state medicalizations and legalizations, but in January 2017, the country will have a new president. That person could order the attorney general to enforce federal prohibition regardless of state law."

On Friday, Blumenauer called the federal prohibition of marijuana "a failure" that has wasted tax dollars and ruined lives. He also said it's time for the government to forge a new path ahead for the plant.

"As more states move to legalize marijuana as Oregon, Colorado, Washington and Alaska have done," Blumenauer said, "it's imperative the federal government become a full partner in building a workable and safe framework."

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Senator Lindsey Graham cosponsors the CARERS Act

Lindsey Graham’s Mind-Expanding Pot Journey

The conservative senator’s evolving views track a striking shift in public opinion on medical marijuana.

By James Higdon
September 20, 2016

Eighteen months ago, three junior senators attempted something their chamber had never considered, much less accomplished—starting to roll back the long-entrenched federal ban on marijuana.

Though all first-termers, the senators—Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rand Paul of Kentucky—knew enough about the difficulties of marijuana politics to avoid any mention of full-scale legalization. They tailored the bill to focus narrowly on medical marijuana and the half-dozen stumbling blocks in federal law that have made it so difficult for Americans to get safe access to the increasingly popular drug.

They branded their bill with a clever acronym: the CARERS Act, for the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States Act of 2015, which, if passed, would do a number of sensible things: reclassify marijuana so that it is considered to have some medical value; permit banks to handle money from legal marijuana businesses; prevent the government from interfering with state-legal medical marijuana programs; exclude non-psychoactive marijuana extracts from the definition of marijuana; grant military veterans access to medical marijuana; and break the government’s monopoly on medical marijuana research.

To no one’s surprise, the bill went absolutely nowhere. But it didn’t die. Despite being ignored by leadership, it managed to collect 16 cosponsors by the end of 2015, a laundry list of mostly Democrats, two Republicans and an independent. Then, early this year, a 17th name was added, and a surprising one at that: Lindsey Graham.

The senior senator from South Carolina, an establishment Republican if ever there was one, a foreign policy hawk who ran for president this cycle in large part because he perceived Rand Paul’s isolationism as a threat to national security, Lindsey Graham—who represents a state that doesn’t even allow medical marijuana—has become one of the unlikeliest and potentially most influential of the bill’s backers because he is unique among the bill's cosponsors (now at 20), as he’s the only one with a gavel.

And unlike his colleagues among Republican leadership, Graham is using his authority to move the marijuana bill forward. In mid-July, he chaired a Judiciary subcommittee hearing focused on the pros and cons of changing the way the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies marijuana like it was heroin. Over the 4½ decades of the war on drugs, there have been plenty of hearings on the dangers of marijuana, but before July 13 there had never been a hearing on marijuana's medical benefits. “If there was one, I don't know about it,” Graham told POLITICO Magazine.

The emergence of Graham as an honest broker of information on this issue reflects rapidly shifting attitudes among conservative Americans. Opposition to marijuana legalization among Republicans has withered from 60 percent in December 2014 to 42 percent in July 2016, while the percentage of Republicans in favor of legalizing pot has grown from 28 percent to 45 percent over the same period. But Graham does more than just add a prominent voice. His decision to chair a hearing was a critical step (though no guarantee) toward getting a vote on the CARERS Act in the full Judiciary Committee, the only avenue by which it can reach the Senate floor.

Graham, he is at pains to point out, rejects marijuana for recreational use, but he told POLITICO Magazine, “I am open-minded to the idea that the plant may have medical attributes that could help people.…I'm convinced that we should, as a nation, research the medical applications of the marijuana plant....It could be life-changing. I just want to do it in a scientific way…and the current system doesn't allow for the research that we need.”

We’ve seen this before, when public opinion swings suddenly on a divisive cultural issue and yanks lawmakers along by the arm. It happened with gay marriage, and the impetus of the change is always personal experience. Graham’s conversion has been no different.

“I have several people that I personally know who have children who have some epilepsy and other diseases,” Graham told POLITICO, “and the parents seem to think this helps. And…what stuns me is how little we know and how much more we could know. Some of these [diseases], like epilepsy, the families tell us that it has changed the child's life. That’s why I want more research. Is that anecdotal, or is it real? To me, that's very exciting.”

Parents of children with epilepsy have become the most effective advocates for marijuana law reform at every level. Consequently, in a very short time frame, laws legalizing cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant, have passed in 16 states, mostly in the south and southeast: Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and, yes, South Carolina. The problem is that most of these laws provide little access to actual CBD because marijuana is still classified as a highly addictive drug with no medical benefit. So the state laws, in some cases, have made matters worse by providing false hope for the parents of sick children, a problem the CARERS Act aims to solve.

“When you ask if it is still illegal under federal law, it’s almost a trick question,” said Jill Swing, a South Carolina resident and mother of a child affected by a disease that is treatable with CBD. “Currently the federal government is in conflict with itself. The Federal Farming Act of 2014 allows for cultivation of hemp….That being said, all forms of cannabis, including hemp, are considered Schedule I controlled substances by the DEA. That is why the CBD component of the CARERS Act is so important.”

It’s parents like Swing who helped educate Graham on the importance of CBD, and legalizing CBD has become sort of an entry-level course for former drug warriors who are now inching toward drug policy reform.

Even Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and longtime bête noire of marijuana advocates, made an appearance at Graham’s subcommittee hearing in July to express his support for legalizing CBD. But he made sure to limit his support to juvenile epileptics and “children who suffer from these rare conditions.” In essence, he was acknowledging the medical benefit of marijuana but reserving the right to determine which sick people deserve access to that medicine.

Graham’s open-mindedness on the issue goes back to an experience with his own mother, whose death he wrote about in an autobiography he released in the run-up to his presidential campaign. In My Story, a 126-page e-book available on his website, Graham relates in gripping detail his mother Millie’s battle with stage IV Hodgkin’s lymphoma, her quick wasting, how the doctors pronounced her dead, and how Lindsey rushed to her bedside and revived her, if only for a few days. His mother, 56, told him, "Lindsey, let me go.” After a week, during which the 21-year-old college student witnessed his mother convulse with seizures, Graham, fighting back tears, told his mother: “Okay, let go. We’ll be fine. Let go.”

“She smiled at me,” Graham wrote, “and died five minutes later.”

The book never delves into whether marijuana might have helped his mother (she died in 1976, decades before the debate would emerge so publicly), but the anecdote is just the kind of experience that could cause even a lobbyist-besieged senator to empathize with cancer survivors evangelizing the benefits of medical marijuana. So, I asked Graham if that’s what happened with him.

“Absolutely,” he said, without hesitation. “I mean, chemotherapy—they kill you to make you better. And people who go through chemo treatment go through hell. If there's an application of the marijuana plant that can help patients like that? I know they need all the help they can get. I just want to make sure we do it based on science, but that is a worthy goal....Sign me up.”

But Graham’s votes haven’t always matched his thinking on the issue. It took some gentle nudging from Don Murphy, director of conservative outreach for the Marijuana Policy Project, to get Graham’s votes to reflect his rhetoric.

It was the morning of June 11, 2015, when Murphy said he caught Graham in the hallway before Graham went into a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee to vote. Graham asked Murphy, “How you doing?” And Murphy seized the opening.

“Well, that depends on how you vote on my amendment.”

“Well, what amendment is that?”

“It’s the medical marijuana amendment,” Murphy recalls telling Graham, “and I’ve read that you’ve made certain positive statements about the states making these decisions and patients making these decisions, and I hope your vote reflects your previous statements.”

Indeed, in February 2014, Graham had told WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina: “…when it comes to medicinal marijuana and this [CBD] oil, I think politicians should embrace what makes sense….This is about families with sick children.” In effect, Graham was making favorable statements for more than a year before Murphy grabbed him in the hallway. He just wasn’t voting that way.

Murphy reminded him of this, he said, eliciting polite nods from Graham as the senator clutched the doorknob of the committee room before disappearing inside.

Murphy’s amendment, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), aimed at restricting federal law enforcement from meddling with state-legal medical marijuana programs. It passed the Senate Appropriations Committee that day by a vote of 21-9, with eight Republicans in favor. At the end of the meeting, Murphy was ecstatic, shaking hands and thanking members, but then he was disappointed to see that Graham had voted no by proxy.

Later that day, while roaming the halls on the second floor of the Russell Office Building, Murphy said he just happened to bump into Graham and a staffer as they left his office. Graham was holding a laundered shirt on a hanger, which impressed Murphy because Graham hadn’t delegated that chore to his staffer.

“How you doing?” Graham asked Murphy, recognizing him from earlier.

“Well, I’d be doing better if, you know, I thought I’d get your vote.”

“What do you mean?” Graham said.

“You voted no by proxy."

Graham looked at his staffer and said, “I did?” And the staffer said, “Yeah, you did.” In long committee meetings, it's not uncommon for a member to step out for a few minutes and for a staffer seated behind the member to indicate with a head nod to the chair how the member intended to vote for a particular amendment. In this case, Graham's staffer guessed incorrectly.

“What!?” Graham said. “I didn’t want to do that!” And right there, Graham pulled out his flip phone and called the clerk to change his vote, but it was too late. From that moment on, Graham was thinking about the issue in a new way.

About six months later, Murphy was in New Hampshire lobbying presidential candidates for the Marijuana Policy Project and he bumped into Graham at a Jeb Bush rally, just a few weeks after Graham had suspended his own campaign. Graham came up to Murphy and told him, “I’m on that bill!”—meaning the CARERS Act, which caught Murphy off-guard because it’s his job to know these things. He went back to his hotel that night and looked it up on his laptop and didn’t see Graham’s name listed as a co-sponsor, so the next day he hunted Graham down and found him at another Jeb rally.

“Senator, respectfully, I don’t see your name on there,” Murphy said.

“It’s on there! I promise you, it’s on there!” Graham insisted. For whatever bureaucratic reason, Graham’s name wasn’t officially added to the co-sponsor list until March 10, a month after the New Hampshire primary.

On July 13, 6½ months after Graham withdrew from the presidential race and six months after he saw Don Murphy in New Hampshire, Graham chaired the Senate’s first-ever hearing on medical marijuana. Murphy was sitting in the gallery.

About an hour into the hearing, Graham shuffled through his papers, found what he was looking for, and holding it up, he said, “I don’t mean to advertise for this guy, but Dr. Reefer—”displaying a photo of a pot leaf-emblazoned billboard for a Las Vegas-area business that provides medical marijuana cards to qualifying residents. “He has a billboard. I think this is in Las Vegas," Graham said, eliciting enough laughs from the gallery to wake the room up.

Graham entered Dr. Reefer into the record to demonstrate that some states’ medical marijuana programs “have not gone down the scientific route,” and he called Dr. Reefer a prime example of a bad actor using medical marijuana as a fig leaf to cover, in Graham’s words, “de facto backdoor legalization” of marijuana for recreational use.

For Graham, the medical marijuana issue is a spectrum: On one end are the juvenile epileptics who need CBD, who he supports without reservation, and on the other end is Dr. Reefer, an operation that Graham sees as making a mockery of medical marijuana in order to legitimize criminal activity. During his hearing, practically in real time, it appeared Graham was trying to determine where along that spectrum he felt comfortable landing.

Graham was introduced to the problem of Dr. Reefer by Miriam Adelson, a medical doctor and an addiction researcher who is also the wife of billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. “They said, 'This is not what you want,’” Graham tells POLITICO Magazine. “And I got a bunch of stuff from California, too. But the Dr. Reefer was just too easy, so I chose him.”

A lawmaker looking for clarity on this issue isn’t likely to get much help from the Adelsons, who have taken seemingly contradictory positions on medical marijuana. The Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation studies medical marijuana in its facility in Tel Aviv, but just two years ago, in 2014, Sheldon Adelson, one of the most prolific donors to conservative causes, gave the anti-medical marijuana campaign in Florida $5.5 million. The Las Vegas Review Journal flipped its editorial position on marijuana from pro to con after Adelson purchased the newspaper. In September, the Adelsons reinforced their commitment to fight medical marijuana with an additional $1 million to fight legalization in Florida. “The Adelsons are strong opponents of medical marijuana,” says Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Miriam Adelson has not responded to a request for comment from POLITICO Magazine. Craig Moon, publisher of the Review Journal , replied in an email, “the editorial board reports to me, I believe that Nevadans should vote no on the recreational marijuana amendment. The Adelson family also shares my view.”

Dr. Reefer is not a real person; it’s a business that doesn’t grow or sell any marijuana. Since it opened in 2001, it charges patients a fee and provides them with a medical card that allows them to purchase marijuana legally at separate establishments. It was founded by a three-time felon who ran afoul of federal authorities in 2010, when he was caught overstepping the bounds of Dr. Reefer’s business model by selling marijuana directly to clients. Dr. Reefer continues its busy referral business with its provocative brand name under new ownership (whose identities are difficult to determine).

“As for the billboards, it’s nothing new,” says Derek Sante, spokesman for Dr. Reefer. “Those billboards have been up for more than a decade.”

Although advocates like Don Murphy have no love for the Adelsons (“It’s heartless to support making criminals out of cancer patients, and that's what Adelsons' position does”), Murphy concedes that operations like Dr. Reefer remain an obstacle to his work.

“Look, he’s not wrong,” Murphy said, referring to Graham. “The nonsense that went on in California for years has made it very difficult for those of us who are advocating for legitimate medical marijuana patients.” But Murphy goes on to connect the dots between bad state law and a paralyzed Congress: “California happens because legislators don’t do their jobs.”

“So, anyway,” Murphy said, bringing it back around to the CARERS Act hearing in July. “I’m real happy with Lindsey Graham.” Like many activists who sat through Graham’s historic Senate hearing, Murphy left that day feeling like Graham meant business.

“I do mean business,” Graham told POLITICO Magazine.

“Sen. Graham has gone above and beyond,” says Murphy. “He just didn’t put his name on it [the CARERS Act], he actually held a hearing. And I give him major props for that, and the hearing was pretty fair.”

“What we're doing today is not enough,” Graham said of the federal drug-law status quo. “We need to do more, and I just want to make sure that what we do doesn't get us to legitimizing the Dr. Reefers of the world.”

On August 11, the DEA refused to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to the less-severe Schedule II, as the CARERS bill would do, but did promise to accept applications for licensed growing operations in order to improve access to research-quality marijuana. It didn’t indicate how many applications it would approve. (Graham has not responded to requests for comment regarding the DEA’s decision.)

Unless something changes in the lame-duck session, the likelihood the CARERS Act gets a vote in this Congress remains close to zero; the fight over Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is all the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on. While the CARERS Act's progress is historic, it's still just a marijuana bill on Capitol Hill.

And the lame-duck session could indeed follow a landslide of state-level marijuana victories that could rattle even the most steadfast drug-war loyalist. Medical marijuana will be on the ballot in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota, while full Colorado-style legalization will be on the ballot in California, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada, where voters could render Dr. Reefer and his "de facto legalization" scheme beside the point.

But Don Murphy of MPP is having a field day with it. He tells all the Republican lawmakers in states where it's on the ballot: "I bet you marijuana gets more votes than you do."

James Higdon is a freelance writer based in Louisville and author of The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate’s Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History. He can be reached at @jimhigdon. Full disclosure: His father, Jimmy Higdon, is a Republican state senator in the Kentucky state legislature.

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This is great. We should contact Senator Lindsey Graham and thank him for cosponsoring the CARERS Act. Someone as influential as Graham can make CARERS go far. Let's tell him about the advantages of recreational marijuana and reassure him that the anti-marijuana propaganda are all lies put out by a desperate alcohol industry that is afraid of competition. They are afraid of not getting the money for selling their poison like they used to.

Red or blue makes little difference when it comes to the question of legalizing marijuana

The adult use of marijuana is now legal in nine states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington — as well as the District of Columbia. Come November, additional states may be joining them.

Voters in North Dakota and Michigan will be deciding on marijuana legalization initiatives on Election Day. If past is precedent, these measures likely will emerge victorious at the polls in at least one, if not both, states.

But the fact remains that majority support for ending cannabis criminalization extends far beyond the boundaries of those individual states that have voted for it. In fact, according to statewide polling data compiled from throughout the year, if direct votes on the issue were held today, a majority of the country would be legal.

Specifically:

1. Sixty-two percent of Maryland adults support “making marijuana legal for recreational use,” according to the results of a September 2018 Goucher College poll.

2. Fifty-six percent of likely voters in Minnesota believe that the adult use of marijuana ought to be legal, according to the findings of September 2018 Survey USA poll.

3. Sixty-one percent of Wisconsin voters say, “Marijuana should be fully legalized and regulated like alcohol,” concludes an August 2018 Marquette University survey.

4. Fifty-nine percent of voters in Connecticut support “allowing adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use,” according to survey data released in August 2018 by Quinnipiac University.

5. Fifty-three percent of Arizona voters “support legalizing marijuana for adults 21 and over,” according to the results of a June 2018 Emerson College poll.

6. Fifty-three percent of registered voters in Texas approve legalizing either small amounts of marijuana (30 percent) or any amount (23 percent), concludes a June 2018 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.

7. Sixty-three percent of New Mexicans support regulating and taxing adult use marijuana sales, according to the results of a May 2018 poll conducted by the firm Research & Polling Incorporated.

8. Fifty-five percent of Georgia voters endorse legalizing the use of marijuana by adults, according to a May 2018 Survey USA poll.

9. Sixty-three percent of New York voters support "allowing adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use,” according to the findings of a May 2018 Quinnipiac University poll.

10. Fifty-nine percent of New Jersey residents support "legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use" and 60 percent believe that "legalizing marijuana in New Jersey would help the state's economy,” according to the results of an April 2018 Monmouth University survey.

11. Sixty-six percent of Illinois voters support "the legalization of recreational marijuana if it is taxed and regulated like alcohol,” according to survey data compiled in March 2018 by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.

12. Fifty-six percent of New Hampshire residents support the passage of legislation to eliminate criminal and civil penalties for the possession and cultivation of marijuana for personal use, according to a February 2018 UNH Granite State poll.

13. Sixty-two percent of registered voters in Florida support "legalizing and regulating marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol,” according to the results of a February 2018 poll conducted by the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Laboratory.

Evident from this state-specific data is the reality that Americans’ desire for cannabis legalization is bipartisan — with voters in blue and red states alike expressing majority support. Voters support for legalizing marijuana for medical purposes is even more strongly bipartisan, with super-majorities of self-identified Democrats, Republicans, and Independents endorsing reform.

As many federal politicians approach the upcoming midterm elections, and as state lawmakers look ahead to their 2019 legislative sessions, they ought to keep in mind the simple fact that marijuana legalization likely remains far more popular with their constituents than they are — and they ought to legislate accordingly.

Paul Armentano is the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He is the co-author of the book, Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? and the author of the book, The Citizen’s Guide to State-By-State Marijuana Laws.

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Senator Orrin Hatch is starting to see the light

A conservative Republican U.S. senator spoke about the "possible benefits of medical marijuana as an alternative to opioids" on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon, and introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at expanding cannabis research.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, who has represented Utah in Congress since 1977, has historically not been a champion of marijuana law reform, and continues to oppose full recreational legalization.

But in a floor speech he said that "in our zeal to enforce the law, we too often blind ourselves to the medicinal benefits of natural substances like cannabis."

While I certainly do not support the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, the evidence shows that cannabis possesses medicinal properties that can truly change people’s lives for the better," the senator said. "And I believe, Mr. President, that we would be remiss if we threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Hatch's new bill, the Marijuana Effective Drug Study (MEDS) Act of 2017 would ease researchers' access to marijuana for studies on its medical benefits and would require the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to develop recommendations for good manufacturing practices for growing and producing cannabis for research.

In a pun-filled statement about the legislation, Hatch said it is "high time to address research into medical marijuana," adding:

"Our country has experimented with a variety of state solutions without properly delving into the weeds on the effectiveness, safety, dosing, administration and quality of medical marijuana. All the while, the federal government strains to enforce regulations that sometimes do more harm than good. To be blunt, we need to remove the administrative barriers preventing legitimate research into medical marijuana, which is why I’ve decided to roll out the MEDS Act.”

Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are initial cosponsors of the bill.

In his floor remarks, Hatch spotlighted impediments to research that currently exist because of marijuana's status under federal law.

We lack the science to support use of medical marijuana products like CBD oils not because researchers are unwilling to do the work, but because of bureaucratic red tape and over-regulation," he said. "Under current law, those who want to complete research on the benefits of medical marijuana must engage in a complex application process and interact with several federal agencies. These regulatory acrobatics can take researchers over a year, if not more, to complete. And the longer researchers have to wait, the longer patients have to suffer.

Cannabis is currently classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. That's the most restrictive category, and is supposed to be reserved for drugs with no medical value and a high potential for abuse. Researchers have long complained that the classification creates additional hurdles that don't exist for studies on other substances.

The Senate Appropriations Committee issued a report last week expressing concern about Schedule I's research roadblocks.

There are several other pending marijuana bills in the Senate that would change federal laws to allow protections to people who use medical cannabis legally in accordance with state laws, but Hatch has not yet added his name as cosponsor of any of them. One such comprehensive bill has three Republican and three Democratic cosponsors.

Activists in Hatch's home state of Utah are currently collecting signatures to qualify a medical cannabis ballot initiative for 2018. A recent poll found that 79% of the state's likely voters support the concept.

Hatch is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is opposing the pending Utah ballot initiative.

"We believe that society is best served by requiring marijuana to go through further research and the FDA approval process that all other drugs must go through before they are prescribed to patients," the Church said in a statement earlier this year.

While Hatch hasn't revealed his position on the ballot measure, he did speak of a young Utah constituent who suffers from seizures and could benefit from medical cannabis.

"This poor family is seeking help, yearning for a way for their child to live a safe and healthy life," he said. "Compounds found in marijuana could significantly mitigate the severity of my friend’s seizures and even help him lead a normal life. But current regulations prevent the development of any such treatment from going forward. So this young man is left to suffer."

But despite Hatch's support for research and acknowledgment of marijuana's medical benefits, he isn't exactly a fan of how many state laws regulate the drug.

"If we make medical marijuana accessible to those who really need it, we should not increase access to recreational marijuana, nor should we do anything to promote the industry that has developed around marijuana dispensaries," he said, adding:

Mr. President, the recreational marijuana industry has its fair share of budding entrepreneurs. But these men and women are in no way qualified to issue prescriptions or give any medical advice whatsoever to people suffering from chronic conditions. Only experienced medical professionals who have undergone years of education and formal training are qualified to consult patients seeking a marijuana-derived treatment. Only licensed professionals know how to accurately diagnose illnesses and use approved medical treatments to safely treat disease.

The senator also expressed discomfort with the smoking of medical cannabis, saying he believes that "treatment options should focus on non-combustive forms of marijuana."

Hatch introduced a similar marijuana research bill last year, but did not so clearly endorse cannabis's medical potential in the related press release as he did in his floor remarks this time.

A growing body of research suggests that legal marijuana access is associated with reduced opioid addiction and overdose rates.

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Let's thank Senator Orrin Hatch for taking this stand. Let's tell him the positive things associated with marijuana and why marijuana should be legal at the federal level.

Trump sends mixed message on marijuana, but pot industry pushes ahead

DENVER – America’s marijuana industry isn't sure where President Trump and his attorney general stand on marijuana, but it is forging ahead with expansion plans anyway.

Cannabis businesses are hiring new workers, leasing new space and pushing across state borders. And regulators are drafting rules that will give access to legal recreational pot to tens of millions of adults.

The stakes are high: This is a job-generating industry that cannabis data firm New Frontier Data estimates may be worth $2.3 billion in taxes within three years.

“Far from the punchline of a joke, these are real people and real lives,” said Colorado Rep. Jared Polis, a Boulder Democrat who recently co-founded the pro-legalization Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

The nation’s marijuana industry expanded rapidly under President Obama, whose administration laid out Justice Department priorities for targeting drug dealers. In short, the Obama administration said, it would leave companies alone in states where voters approved recreational pot if the states took solid steps to keep marijuana away from kids and profits away from drug cartels.

Medical marijuana is reserved for people who’ve gotten a doctor’s recommendation to use it to alleviate specific symptoms, while states with that permit recreational use allow any adult to buy marijuana.

In states with licensed cannabis stores, it’s easy to forget those businesses sell a plant that remains an illegal Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law. Federal prosecutors, if they chose, could easily arrest tens of thousands of people who have state licenses to grow and sell the drug, or even anyone walking out of a pot shop with a purchase. But they haven’t.

Trump’s administration may take a different tack, but so far, it has delivered conflicting messages.

Last month, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the Justice Department would not use federal laws to prosecute medical marijuana users, in part because Congress has already banned it from doing so. But he drew a distinction between medical and recreational use.

“I do believe you'll see greater enforcement” of federal laws against recreational marijuana use, he said. Then, in the same press conference, he suggested the matter wasn’t settled and referred reporters to the Justice Department for comment.

Shortly after, Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a speech seemed to suggest there’d be stricter enforcement in states with recreational marijuana. Members of Congress, including Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., say Sessions has reassured them privately that is not the case.

Cannabis industry roiled by White House comments on enforcement
The whiplash from the shifting positions jostled the market. Marijuana stocks tracked by Viridian Capital Advisors had generally risen steadily all year – up about 25% – until the day Spicer spoke. Then, in the hours after his press conferences, 80% of those marijuana-related stocks dropped. The next day, the first full day of trading following the comments, it got worse: 92% of the stocks dropped, said Viridian, which provides financial and data-analysis to the cannabis industry.

Those stocks are now recovering, said Viridian’s president, Scott Greiper: “I think the industry is very comfortable operating in a harsh, uncertain environment. It’s just what we’re used to.” Viridian tracks the movement of 50 publicly traded cannabis companies that are either worth more than $10,000 each or see trading volume of $20,000 daily.

Decriminalizing marijuana has widespread support.

Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, the District of Columbia and California voters have all approved laws allowing adults to grow and possess small amounts of recreational pot, though not every state has a functioning marketplace. And a Quinnipiac University poll released last month found 71% of Americans would oppose efforts to enforce federal marijuana laws in those eight states. The poll also found that 93% of voters support allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes and 59% support making it legal for all purposes.

Congress has prohibited the Justice Department from interfering with states’ medical marijuana programs, but has remained silent about recreational marijuana.

Many marijuana businesses had hoped Trump would at least maintain the Obama-era attitude, if not relax restrictions even further in a nod to states’ rights, job creation, personal liberty. Trump on the campaign trail said he’d respect state laws that permit recreational pot.

Smoke, because you can: Inside a legal marijuana dinner
Troy Dayton, CEO of the ArcView Group, which offers cannabis industry investment services and research, says the pot business also plays into Trump's "America First" policy.

“This would be a really huge missed opportunity if we let other countries get ahead of us in something that is really our ours to lose," Dayton said. "The question is whether we want these to be American jobs, do we want these to be American companies, or do we want Canada and Germany and Columbia take that market share."

Dayton said it's hard to imagine the Trump administration would shut down a widely popular industry: “I have a feeling they get to see the same polls we do.”

Still the broad uncertainty is enough to keep some cannabis businesses cautious. In California, marijuana grower CANNDESCENT has given its products soothing names like "Calm" and "Connect," instead of relying of more typical names like AK-47 or Durban Poison or Day Wrecker.

“We literally changed our product names in order to better educate the public and seem less ominous to government officials,” said CANNDESCENT CEO Adrian Sedlin.

In states with recreational marijuana marketplaces, many front-line marijuana business say they think the country has come too far to ever roll back recreational pot, and regulators in California and Nevada continue drafting the rules necessary to implement their voter-approved cannabis marketplaces. Polis, the congressman from Boulder, said he plans to re-introduce federal legislation to regulate marijuana like alcohol, which would give states the power to create legal marijuana marketplaces if they choose. Previous measures haven't received enough support to pass.

Marijuana business owners say they'll stand tall despite the potential threat to their livelihoods.

“We employ 24 full-time people. It gives us a tremendous sense of pride,” said Amy Andrle of L’Eagle Services, a Denver-based marijuana store specializing in pesticide-free cannabis. “I’m very proud of the work we are doing. This is our small business we are running in this great country.”

Source

You know what to do. Contact the usual suspects in the House,Senate
Yes,even President Trump himself. The more of us they hear from the better.

CONGRESS WON'T GIVE JEFF SESSIONS MONEY TO FIGHT STATE MARIJUANA LAWS

Congress won’t give Attorney General Jeff Sessions any money to fight a war on state laws to legalize marijuana—at least not in the new budget bill.

A bipartisan group of House Democrats and Republicans agreed Sunday to $1 trillion in government spending to avoid a shutdown and see them through to the end of September.

But while it also gave $1.5 billion more for border security and $12.5 billion for new military spending, there wasn’t any money for Sessions to go after states that have legalized medical marijuana and or where the recreational use of the drug is legal.

The move quashes potential plans to try to prevent 44 states, plus Washington D.C. and the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico, “from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

The move led pro-legalization advocacy groups and House representatives to urge Congress to amend federal law, removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act at a time when support for legalizing marijuana is at an all-time high.

“I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store,” Sessions said March 15, likening its use to heroin.

“I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana—so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.”

America, he said: “needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life.”

In 2016 13,000 Americans died of heroin overdoses while a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration fact sheet reports no deaths from the use of marijuana.

Nonetheless, the U.S. Attorney General’s office has been reviewing an Obama-era directive that prevents the federal government from interfering in state level marijuana laws.

Marijuana possession is still a federal offence and Sessions had been considering whether he should enforce the federal U.S. Controlled Substances Act against users of the drug, which is ranks higher than cocaine and methamphetamines.

While Sessions said at a Justice Department press briefing in February that states can “pass the laws they choose,” he reminded them that it remains “a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not.”

Local and state law enforcement have traditionally been relied on to enforce federal law, but in recent instances where city police forces have refused to support Trump’s executive orders on immigration, the federal government has tried to sanction them.

Sessions reportedly told Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s chief of staff last week that he thought Obama’s marijuana directive is “not too far from good policy.”

That means it is time to “ amend federal law in a manner that comports with the available science, public opinion, and with America’s rapidly changing cultural and legal landscape,” said Justin Strekal, Political Director at The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in a statement May 1.

A recent poll by CBS News released April 20 found a 71 percent majority of Americans opposed federal action to stop marijuana sales in states where the drug had been legalized. In all, it found 61 percent of Americans want marijuana to be legalized—a five percentage point increase from the year before and the highest level of support recorded by the poll.

Republicans , known for hardline drug policies, have begun to support legalization too. Last July a poll showed 45 percent of Republicans support legalization measures. Less than a year before the same poll found 50 percent of Republicans opposed them.

“The people have spoken @realDonaldTrump. Don't let Jeff Sessions' draconian views on [marijuana] run roughshod over states,” wrote Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone on Twitter using the “420” code for pot on April 20.

Marijuana, both legal and medicinal, is projected to pull in $7.1 billion in profits in 2016, according to one study. But while the new spending bill gives medical marijuana patients and the businesses that support them “a measure of certainty,” said Oregon House Representative Earl Blumenauer in a statement Monday, the annual challenge of blocking federal action against state marijuana laws “must end.”

“We need permanent protections for state-legal medical marijuana programs, as well as adult-use,” he said.

The best way to achieve this is “removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act,” said Strekal, “so that states possess the flexibility to engage in their own marijuana regulatory policies how best they see fit.”

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Top IRS Official Says Marijuana Banking Reform Would Help Feds ‘Get Paid’

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would like to get paid—and it’d help if the marijuana industry had access to banks like companies in other legal markets, an official with the federal department said. She also talked about unique issues related to federal tax deductions for cannabis businesses.

At an event hosted by UCLA’s Annual Tax Controversy Institute on Thursday, IRS’s Cassidy Collins talked about the “special type of collection challenge” that the agency faces when it comes to working with cannabis businesses while the product remains federally illegal.

While IRS isn’t taking a stand on federal marijuana policy, Collins said that the status quo leaves many cannabis businesses operating on a cash-only basis, creating complications for the agency, in part by making it harder for banks to “pay us.”

“The reason why [the marijuana industry is] cash intensive is twofold,” she said. “Number one, a lot of customers don’t want a paper trail showing that they’re buying marijuana, and number two, the hesitancy of banks to allow marijuana businesses to even bank with them.”

Of course, the reason why many financial institutions remain hesitant to take on cannabis companies as clients is because the plant is a strictly controlled substance under federal law.

“There’s been a number of legislative bills that have been introduced—and I am definitely not expressing any opinion personally or on behalf of the IRS about any pending or proposed legislation,” Collins, who is a senior counsel in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, said. “But it is interesting to note that, if the law changed so that the marijuana businesses could have banks, that would make the IRS’s job to collect [taxes] a lot easier. As part of collection, we want the money. That’s our end goal there.”

A major part of what makes cannabis businesses unique is that they don’t qualify for traditional tax credits under an IRS code known as 280E. That policy “prohibits them from claiming deductions for business expenses because they’re technically being involved in drug trafficking,” Collins explained at the event, from which small excerpts of her comments were reported by Bloomberg.

There are some options available to lessen the burden on marijuana firms, however. At the end of the day, “IRS will work with marijuana companies because, again, we want to get paid,” Collins said.

One of the ways the agency works with marijuana business operators is to have them visit designated IRS “tax assistance centers” that accept cash payments in excess of $50,000. But the official warned businesses to “be prepared to be there for a little while” as the center checks—and double checks—the amount of cash being submitted.

“Revenue officers will assist the marijuana companies in paying us,” she said.

IRS officials could also help cannabis firms by having officials accompany them “to the bank in order to try to help the taxpayer secure a cashier’s payment to pay the IRS, as well as using money orders,” she said, adding that “our revenue officers are are wanting to work with the marijuana companies to help assist them to pay us.”

“When the revenue officers are there in person with the taxpayer, that could potentially help increase the likelihood that the bank will cooperate and help the taxpayer transition into a cashier’s check,” she continued. “And that has been a trend since this first became legal [at the state level], that more and more banks are allowing cannabis companies to bank with them.”

In a report published earlier this year, congressional researchers examined tax policies and restrictions for the marijuana industry—and how those could change if any number of federal reform bills are enacted.

IRS, for its part, said last month that it expects the cannabis market to continue to grow, and it offered some tips to businesses on staying compliant with taxes while the plant remains federally prohibited.

As it stands, banks and credit unions are operating under 2014 guidance from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that lays out reporting requirements for those that choose to service the marijuana industry.

Leaders in both chambers of Congress are working on legalization bills to end federal marijuana prohibition. But stakeholders are hopeful that, in the interim, legislators will enact modest marijuana banking reform. Legislation to protect financial institutions from being penalized for working with cannabis businesses passed the House for the fifth time last month.

Rodney Hood, a board member of the National Credit Union Administration, wrote in a Marijuana Moment op-ed this month that legalization is an inevitability—and it makes the most sense for government agencies to get ahead of the policy change to resolve banking complications.

IRS separately hosted a forum in August dedicated to tax policy for marijuana businesses and cryptocurrency.

Earlier this year, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig told Congress that the agency would “prefer” for state-legal marijuana businesses to be able to pay taxes electronically, as the current largely cash-based system under federal cannabis prohibition is onerous and presents risks to workers.

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019 that he’d like to see Congress approve legislation resolving the cannabis banking issue and he pointed to the fact that IRS has had to build “cash rooms” to deposit taxes from those businesses as an example of the problem.

IRS released updated guidance on tax policy for the marijuana industry last year, including instructions on how cannabis businesses that don’t have access to bank accounts can pay their tax bills using large amounts of cash.

The update appears to be responsive to a Treasury Department internal watchdog report that was released earlier in the year. The department’s inspector general for tax administration had criticized IRS for failing to adequately advise taxpayers in the marijuana industry about compliance with federal tax laws. And it directed the agency to “develop and publicize guidance specific to the marijuana industry.”

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Federal judge tell the DOJ to back off raiding medical marijuana dispensaries

Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Win Battle Against Federal Crackdown

"This is a big win for medical marijuana patients and their providers."

Medical marijuana dispensaries scored a major win on Monday when a federal judge ruled that the Department of Justice cannot prosecute legal providers of medical cannabis.

In his ruling, Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer lifted an injunction against a California dispensary, the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, and its founder, Lynette Shaw, ruling that a budget amendment Congress approved last year requires the federal government to respect state marijuana laws. The DOJ is thus precluded from criminally prosecuting organizations like MAMM that comply with state regulations.

The amendment, sponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and Sam Farr (D-Calif.), was added to last year's federal spending bill. Under the provision, the Justice Department is prohibited from using federal funds to undermine state medical marijuana programs. The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment came in response to a renewed federal crackdown on the medical marijuana industry in California, where medical pot has been legal since 1996. MAMM, located in Fairfax, California, was one of the targeted dispensaries, and shuttered in 2011 under federal pressure.

However, the Justice Department has narrowly interpreted the amendment, telling the Los Angeles Times in April that the new restrictions don't apply to dispensaries or individuals, but instead prevents the feds from "impeding the ability of states to carry out their medical marijuana laws."

The amendment's authors vehemently disagreed, accusing the DOJ of violating the law and calling for an investigation into the department's crackdown on legal businesses.

Monday's ruling struck a blow to the DOJ's interpretation of the law, which Breyer said "tortures the plain meaning of the statute."

"It defies language and logic for the Government to argue that it does not 'prevent' California from 'implementing' its medical marijuana laws by shutting down these same heavily-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries," Breyer wrote. "And contrary to the Government's representation, the record here does support a finding that Californians' access to legal medical marijuana has been substantitively impeded by the closing of dispensaries, and the closing of MAMM in particular."

The decision could have wide-ranging implications, as 23 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized pot for medical use. Another 17 states have allowed the use of non-psychoactive cannabis extract to treat conditions like severe epilepsy in children.

Marijuana advocates applauded Breyer's ruling Tuesday.

"This is a big win for medical marijuana patients and their providers, and a significant victory in our efforts to end the federal government’s war on marijuana. Federal raids of legitimate medical marijuana businesses aren’t just stupid and wasteful, but also illegal," said Dan Riffle, director of federal policies for Marijuana Policy Project, in a statement.

"It's great to see the judicial branch finally starting to hold the Justice Department accountable for its willful violation of Congress's intent to end federal interference with state medical marijuana laws,"said Tom Angell, chairman of the pro-legalization group Marijuana Majority. "I hope the Obama administration takes this ruling to heart and makes sure DEA and federal prosecutors finally stop trying to stand between patients and their medicine."

Shaw, MAMM's founder, also praised the ruling.

"I'm very happy and I’m very relieved that I will get to return to my life’s work,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

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This is fantastic

Federal prosecutors cannot punish two Northern California marijuana growers for violating U.S. drug laws because Congress has protected pot suppliers who follow the state’s medical marijuana law, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge’s decision that two men whose property in Humboldt County was raided by federal drug agents in 2012 had complied with California’s medical marijuana law and could not be sentenced as drug dealers under federal law.

Both men had pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2014, a year before Congress barred the Justice Department from spending money to interfere with a state’s medical marijuana law. California voters approved the nation’s first such law in 1996, and 20 years later approved another law legalizing possession, use and cultivation for personal use of marijuana by adults over 21.

The appeals court had ruled in a separate case in 2016 that the budget restriction prohibited federal prosecution of growers who could prove they were following the state’s medical marijuana law. A year later, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg cited that ruling to bar federal sentencing of the two marijuana growers, the first such decision in the nation. Their lawyer, Ronald Richards, said Friday’s decision was the first by a U.S. appeals court to prohibit federal marijuana prosecution under the congressional restrictions.

“People are still going to prison for marijuana offenses, notwithstanding the fact that most states have medical marijuana laws and many states have legalized marijuana,” Richards said. “This ruling paves the way for others to challenge these prosecutions and not have the decision upset by an appellate court reweighing the evidence.”

He said his clients, Anthony Pisarski and Sonny Moore, would ask Seeborg to withdraw their guilty pleas.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Federal policy on the issue has varied under both the Obama and the Trump administrations. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in January 2018 that his office would resume federal marijuana prosecutions nationwide regardless of state laws, but his successor, William Barr, promised at his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2019 that he would not prosecute growers who complied with state marijuana laws.

Pisarski and Moore were arrested in July 2012 by officers who said they found 327 marijuana plants, along with two loaded guns and $416,000 in cash on their property in a remote area of central Humboldt County. Searches over the next year uncovered more firearms, cash, and gold and silver bars.

The two men presented evidence that they grew the marijuana for nearby nonprofit collectives, which reimbursed them for their costs, and that they were abiding by the state law’s ban on growing marijuana for profit. Federal prosecutors argued that the cash, gold and silver were evidence of a profit-making business, but Seeborg disagreed, noting that such transactions were often made in cash because banks refused to serve marijuana businesses.

Upholding his ruling, the appeals court said prosecutors had not presented any evidence of past or future marijuana sales by the growers, other than the legal transactions with the collectives.

“The presence of weapons and excessive amounts of cash on the Humboldt property was equally consistent with the operation of a rural, cash-intensive enterprise as it was with an unlawful marijuana operation,” said Judge M. Margaret McKeown in the majority opinion. She was joined by Judge Eugene Siler of the federal appeals court in Cincinnati, temporarily assigned to the Ninth Circuit.

Dissenting Judge J. Clifford Wallace said the cash, guns and ammunition were evidence of a for-profit operation that would have violated California law.

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This is awesome. This is a huge win. Thank you 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals for seeing reason. They don't often do that.

Jeff Sessions: ‘Medical marijuana has been hyped, maybe too much’

RICHMOND — Attorney General Jeff Sessions has repeatedly condemned the recreational use of marijuana. On Wednesday he went a step further, casting doubt on medical marijuana use.

“I think medical marijuana has been hyped, maybe too much,” he told reporters in Richmond after an event about violent crime. “Dosages can be constructed in a way that might be beneficial, I acknowledge that, but if you smoke marijuana, for example, where you have no idea how much THC you’re getting, it’s probably not a good way to administer a medicinal amount. So forgive me if I’m a bit dubious about that.”

Sessions also cast doubt, as he has before, on the use of marijuana to curb opioid addiction.

Studies have shown that medical marijuana laws and access to medical marijuana dispensaries are associated with fewer opioid deaths and less prescription painkiller abuse.

During his campaign, President Trump said he was “100­ percent” in favor of medical marijuana. White House spokesman Sean Spicer recently confirmed that the president sees a “big difference” between using marijuana for medical and recreational purposes.

“The problem is that you’re seeing now a disagreement between Sessions and the president on the issue of medical marijuana,” said Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance. “It’s concerning because the administration, the White House themselves, have sort of committed themselves to not going after medical marijuana. Sessions is out casting doubt on that.”

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Smoking is a necessary way to consume medical marijuana, he said, because chronic pain sufferers need the instantaneous relief other forms of the drug cannot provide. The dosage concern doesn’t make sense, he said, because there’s no evidence of fatal marijuana overdoses.

A congressional provision prevents the Justice Department from spending money to interfere with state-level medical marijuana programs. However, that appropriations amendment must be reauthorized this year. Twenty-eight states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico have medical marijuana programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Collins said the federal government could easily do research into marijuana efficacy, but that opponents of legalization are standing in the way.

“The people complaining that more research needs to be done are the very people in a position to do the research,” he said. “But they’ll never do it, because they know the research will show the positives.”

Independent studies have generally found marijuana to be effective for treating chronic pain, nausea and vomiting in cancer patients, and muscle spasticity in multiple sclerosis patients. But the Drug Enforcement Administration, which operates under the Justice Department, maintains that marijuana has no medical value.

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