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A planned House vote this month on legislation to eliminate the federal ban on cannabis and tax legal weed to help communities hardest hit by the war on drugs has been put off until later this year.
Rep. Donald Payne Jr., a bill co-sponsor, said the top priority needed to be new coronavirus stimulus legislation.
“It’s a bill that we need to consider at some point, but I understand why we aren’t voting on it right now," said Payne, D-10th Dist. "Our top priority has to be legislation to help Americans survive this coronavirus global pandemic.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, or MORE Act, would come up for a vote by the end of the year.
“The MORE Act remains a critical component of House Democrats' plan for addressing systemic racism and advancing criminal justice reform," Hoyer said. “Right now, the House is focused relentlessly on securing agreement to stave off a damaging government shutdown and continuing to do its job addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.”
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., announced in August that the chamber would vote on the MORE Act when lawmakers returned to Washington after Labor Day.
But the House and Senate have been unable to come together on a new bill to fight the coronavirus and help Americans in the midst of an economic recession.
The House in May voted to spend $3.4 trillion, which President Donald Trump threatened to veto. Senate Republicans waited more than two months before coming up with their own proposal to spend $1 trillion but didn’t have enough support to pass that bill nor one for $500 billion.
Hope for a deal improved this week following a bipartisan proposal offered by the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 50 more moderate House Democrats and Republicans co-chaired by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist.
“They’re well on their way to suggesting some pretty good things,” Trump said at a White House press conference Wednesday. “I think the things I don’t agree we can probably negotiate. But I think we’ve made some progress over the last week, and I think it was positive that they came out with that report.”
Justin Strekal, political director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the postponement was not due to a lack of support for the legislation.
“This delay does not change the fact that voters in several states, including key electoral battleground states for both control of the presidency and the Senate, will be passing similar state-level marijuana measures on Election Day,” he said.
The MORE Act would remove the federal ban on marijuana, currently scheduled as a Class 1 controlled substance. That would allow states to legalize it, give banks the ability to offer credit cards and checking accounts to legal cannabis businesses, and make it easier to study any medicinal benefits of pot.
The bill also would require federal courts to expunge prior marijuana convictions, tax weed to help communities hardest hit by the war on drugs, fund job training, and provide loans to minority-owned small businesses wanting to enter the cannabis industry.
“As Americans confront hundreds of years of systemic racial injustice, ending the failed war on drugs that has disproportionately hurt Black and Brown Americans must be front and center," said the Democratic co-chairs of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Barbara Lee of California.
"The public deserves this vote and we will continue to build support to meet our objective of passing the MORE Act in the House and sending it to the Senate, which is one step closer to enacting it into law.”
An opponent of legalization, Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, welcomed the delay. calling it “a massive victory for public health, safety, and quite frankly commonsense.”
“While almost 200,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and millions more are desperate for aid due to the resulting economic fallout, the fact that marijuana legalization was even on anyone’s mind is inconceivable,” he said.
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com.
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Vote on removing federal marijuana ban postponed as House focuses on new stimulus bill - NJ.com
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