House votes to legalize marijuana despite Biden opposition
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Friday voted to federally legalize marijuana, but the bill faces long odds in the Senate and a possible veto by President Biden, who opposes legalizing pot.
The bill would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and let states set their own policies. Biden has not specifically addressed his stance on the bill, but his aides say he opposes legalization while supporting more limited steps toward decriminalization.
The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act passed 220-204. Two Democrats voted against it and only three Republicans voted in favor.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated Friday that Biden does not support the bill — without explicitly saying so — but added that he would support some reforms.
“As the president said during the campaign, our current marijuana laws are not working,” Psaki said. “He agrees that we need to rethink our approach, including to address the racial disparities and systemic inequities in our criminal justice system, broaden research on the effects of marijuana and support the safe use of marijuana for medical purposes.”
Psaki added, “We look forward to working with Congress to achieve our shared goals and we’ll continue having discussions with them about this objective.”
Some Republicans argued Congress should be focused on more pressing matters such as soaring inflation — while other Republicans, including some marijuana reform advocates, quibbled with the bill’s policies.
A recent Gallup poll found 68 percent of Americans, including half of Republicans, support legalizing pot, and federal legalization is widely considered inevitable due to overwhelming support among younger adults. Since 2012, 18 states, two territories and Washington, DC, have legalized recreational marijuana under local law. Most other states allow marijuana possession for medical purposes.
Bill sponsor Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) urged colleagues to support the MORE Act, saying Friday, “This bill will greatly reduce crime by redefining as not crimes things that are now considered crimes and by releasing people in jail who should not be in jail.”
But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Democrats called the vote because they “can’t deal” with other problems, such as inflation and illegal immigration, both at four-decade highs.
“You know why they’re dealing with this today? Because they can’t deal with the real problems facing the American people,” Jordan said. “The left will not let the Democrats do what needs to be done to help the employment problem, the energy problems, the illegal immigration problem on our southern border. So what did they do? They legalize drugs.”
However, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said the measure was overdue and that “48 states have some form of legalization” already, though federal prohibition makes it tough for state-legal businesses to access banking services and for researchers to study pot because it’s in the highly restricted federal Schedule I.
Some longtime Republican cannabis advocates opposed the bill.
Libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) tweeted, “The MORE Act is supposed to make marijuana MORE legal but it creates: MORE marijuana crimes, MORE federal taxes, MORE government spending, MORE central planning. Why not just get the Feds out of it?”
Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), co-chairman of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, also opposed the bill, writing in an op-ed that he wanted legislation that does more to set up a federal regulatory framework and panning the MORE Act as “a messaging bill at best and at worst, irresponsible.”
The bill previously passed the House in December 2020, but that feat was overshadowed by the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic and a contentious post-election presidential transition.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is an enthusiastic advocate of pot legalization, but a handful of Senate Democrats are opposed, meaning it likely lacks the 60 votes needed to proceed.
Outraging marijuana advocates, the White House proposed a federal budget this week that would keep a long-running policy in place barring local officials in Washington from taking steps to regulate recreational pot shops. Last year, Biden fired at least five White House staffers who admitted to past pot use, despite the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris also is an admitted past user.
Biden, who turns 80 this year, wrote some of the nation’s harshest drug laws during his 36 years in the Senate, but he relaxed his stance during the 2020 presidential campaign.
At a 2019 presidential primary debate, Biden said that if elected, he wanted to release “everyone” in prison for marijuana. But after more than a year in office, he has yet to use his clemency powers to free anyone from prison.
The president laughed off a question from The Post in November about whether he would be freeing marijuana inmates — saying ahead of Thanksgiving it would be “just turkeys.”
Some people still are serving life in federal prison for large-scale marijuana operations, including Ismael Lira, 44, and Pedro Moreno, 62, who were convicted of distributing marijuana imported from Mexico.
Another federal inmate, Luke Scarmazzo, 41, has served 14 years of a 22-year sentence for running a medical marijuana operation in California.
Last year, President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of seven people serving life terms for marijuana — including two men who were given life without parole under the three-strikes provision of the Biden-authored 1994 crime law.
Trump in 2018 endorsed a different bill to federalize marijuana policy. That bill, drafted by then-Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), did not pass.
Colorado and Washington state voters passed the nation’s first pot legalization measures in 2012. Other states followed, including Alaska, California, Illinois, Montana, New York and Virginia. Federal prosecutors generally defer to state policies, even though pot possession remains a federal crime.
Voters in a 19th state — South Dakota — voted to legalize pot in 2020 but the ballot measure was overturned in court the following year.
