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EXPERTS PESSIMISTIC ABOUT MORE ACT, EQUAL ACT
Even as a record 68% of the country favors marijuana legalization, according to a recent Gallup poll, a cannabis industry reporter last week said passage of the MORE Act or something else that decriminalizes marijuana is a long way off. “Five experts on politics in the weed industry I spoke with mostly agreed,” Sean Teehan wrote, saying the largest hurdles are a gridlocked Congress, a lack of political incentives for lawmakers to support legislation – or significant pro-cannabis reform – and an absence of consensus on what legislation should look like in practice.”
According to John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and the senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, the main reason legislation is extremely unlikely to pass in the current congressional session ending on Jan 6, 2023, is that the issue simply doesn’t have enough support in the Senate.
“The votes just aren’t there – they’re barely there in the House. Democrats don’t even have the 50 votes in the Senate for it, and they need 60,” Hudak said.
The situation doesn’t look brighter following the November elections, said Jay Wright, a partner at an Alabama law firm and editor of the National Law Review. “I think if you see Republicans take the House in this upcoming midterm I think it’s going to be a gridlocked government and I don’t know if this is going to be the kind of issue that’s going to be on the front burner,” Wright said.
The EQUAL Act has been attached to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act by Rep Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ). The amendment is one of a large number of riders attached to the NDAA, few of which ever survive passage of the annual appropriations bill.
“Whether senators will go along with enacting any of these reforms in the final bill remains to be seen,” Marijuana Moment reported last week, “but they would not be included under Senate leaders’ proposed amendment to entirely substitute the language of the House bill with the chamber’s own approach that will be considered when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill after the midterm elections.”
In fact, some suggest that the President’s administrative review of the scheduling of marijuana may be a trap. “Legalizing via Congress is (relatively) quick and easy,” Bruce Barcott wrote this week in Leafly. “The MORE Act, which would end the federal prohibition of marijuana, has now passed the House twice, but does not currently have enough support in the Senate.”
However, the Biden review is fraught with peril, Barcott says:
This order will be slow-walked by the FDA and DEA. They will run out the clock on the first Biden Administration.
If Biden is defeated in 2024, his Republican successor will kill the initiative. Even if the FDA and DEA come in with a shocking report advocating the removal of cannabis from the federal drug schedule, the new president will simply round file it. This has, sadly, happened before. If you don’t know the notorious story of President Nixon and the Shafer Commission, I invite you to wallow in that infamous chapter of American history.
If President Biden wins a second term in 2024, the outcome could be even worse.
If Biden presses DEA and FDA to act, his “fresh look” at marijuana’s status could result in a decision to keep it as Schedule I or re-schedule cannabis as a Schedule II substance. Both would be disastrous for pot decriminalization.
This is not likely to end well.
NY Cannabis Insider, An honest take on the likelihood of federal marijuana legalization (October 3, 2022)
Marijuana Moment, Senators File NDAA Amendments To Legalize Medical Marijuana For Military Veterans And Protect VA Home Loan Benefits (October 3, 2022)
Leafly, President Biden’s marijuana ‘review’ could be a deadly trap (October 13, 2022)
– Thomas L. Root