Later this month, there will be a crucial vote in the US House of Representatives on an amendment to protect legal marijuana states from federal interference. The passage of this amendment would be our biggest federal victory yet! But we need your help to ensure that we have the votes necessary to win.
Since 2014, members of Congress have passed annual spending bills that have included a provision protecting those who engage in the state-sanctioned use and dispensing of medical cannabis from federal prosecution by the Department of Justice. The amendment maintains that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states from “implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
It is time for Congress to expand these important protections to adult-use legalization states. Today, nearly one in four Americans reside in a jurisdiction where the adult use of cannabis is legal under state statute.
Known as the Blumenauer-McClintock-Norton amendment, after Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D), a founding member of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, Tom McClintock (R) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the amendment removes the word “medical” from the existing language — thereby extending these protections to both qualified patients and to adults, as well as to those licensed in both the medical and recreational industries.
The fix is literally that simple.
This expanded language passed the House last year but was later removed by the Senate leadership. Send a message right now to your Representative and urge them to vote ‘yes’ and fight to keep this language in the final version of the CJS appropriations bill!
