An Epic Bill Introduction by Congressman Rohrabacher from California for the newly introduced “Respect State Marijuana Laws Act” (also see 2015 version)
Visit Mr. Rohrabacher’s website for more links and articles to Cannabis legislation.
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office FEDERAL MARIJUANA POLICY The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) for 30 minutes. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to ask my colleagues to join me in the legislation that I have submitted today, which is the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. For too long, Washington's decisionmakers have pursued the same policies over a whole range of issues without regard for whether those policies are actually beneficial to the American people. In fact, they continue to support policies that have utterly failed--many of these things--because the intent sounds so good. So, over and over again, we see failed policies remain in place, wasting money. Rather than evaluating the reason for the policy failures and ultimately deciding to change course in Washington, the habit has been simply doubling down on regulations, personnel, and tax dollars spent, believing that that will have and bring a different outcome. Last November, the American people registered their dissatisfaction with this way of thinking by electing Donald Trump to the Presidency. President Trump's statements on the campaign trail loudly and aggressively challenged the status quo. We haven't had someone here shaking up the status quo for a long time, but he did so by promising to revisit a whole host of failed Federal policies that have been crying out for attention for years and, in some cases, decades. Once such failed policy has been the U.S. Government spending billions of dollars and wasting the time of Federal employees--hundreds of thousands, if not maybe tens of thousands of Federal employees--in order to prevent adults from smoking a weed, marijuana. Candidate Trump told the voters this was an issue to be left up to the States, especially when it comes to medical marijuana. At a 2015 rally in Sparks, Nevada, then-Candidate Trump said: ``Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen-- right? Don't we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states.'' It should be a State situation, I think. ``In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state.'' I could not agree more with the President. Indeed, it is the very approach that I have advocated for several years. In this vein, I have reintroduced today, as I said, the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act earlier today, along with Republican colleagues Tom McClintock, Ted Yoho, Don Young, Duncan Hunter, Justin Amash, and Tom Massie, as well as Democratic colleagues Steve Cohen, Mark Pocan, Earl Blumenauer, Dina Titus, Jared Polis, and Barbara Lee. My bill, which has not received a designation yet but is entitled the ``Respect State Marijuana Laws Act,'' will permit residents to participate within the confines of a State's medical and recreational marijuana program without running afoul of Federal law. Admittedly, my personal preference would be to lift the Federal Government's prohibition on marijuana entirely. However, I understand that this approach would be a nonstarter for many of my colleagues, which is why I have promoted an approach that simply gives the States and their residents the room they need to take a different approach to this issue, should they choose to take that different approach. Under my proposal, if a resident or business acts outside the boundaries set by a particular State, or if a State has chosen not to allow medical or recreational use of marijuana by their residents, the Federal Government would still be empowered to enforce Federal law in those instances. If that is what the people of the State want--it to be legal--the Federal Government can still get involved. Of course, the number of States that have resisted the shift in national opinion on this issue is small. To date, 44 States, including D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico, have enacted laws that allow, to a varying degree, the cultivation, sale, and use of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. For those States and territories that have discarded strict marijuana prohibition, my bill would align Federal policy accordingly. {time} 2000 This is to those States and the people of those States who have decided they don't want the marijuana prohibition. My bill would then make sure that Federal law is aligned with the States' and the people in those States' desires so that the residents and businesses wouldn't have to worry about Federal prosecution. For those few States that have thus far maintained a policy of strict prohibition, my bill would change nothing. I think that this is a reasonable compromise that places the primary responsibility of police powers back in the States and the local communities that are most directly affected. Over the past few years, the disparity between State and Federal marijuana policies has confused and stifled banking, proper taxation, research, natural resources development, law enforcement, and related activities. A plethora of bills, many of which I have happily cosponsored, have been introduced in the House to tackle these problems on an issue-by-issue basis. However, my bill is the only one that would solve all these problems in one fell swoop. My bill is short, straightforward, and easy to understand. It amends the Controlled Substances Act to add a new rule that reads as follows: ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of this subchapter related to marijuana shall not apply to any person acting in compliance with State laws relating to the production, possession, distribution, dispensation, or administration or delivery of marijuana.'' The major difficulties that landlords, dispensaries, banks, and others find themselves in in those States where the majority of people--maybe the vast majority of people--have voted to make marijuana legal in their borders stems from the fact that the Federal Government law considers that activity still illegal. By explicitly stating that as long as these folks are following the State law, their actions are, by definition, not illegal to the Federal Government, if we do that, many of these obstacles, many of these confusions that people have to deal with in those States, in the States where people have voted to make sure they don't want marijuana illegal, well, their problems and the complications, the banking rules and everything else would be solved immediately. [[Page H1076]] Now that we have established President Trump's policy preference as it relates to this issue, which is he believes it should be left up to the States, as well as my legislative proposal, let us turn to the reasons why Federal policy ought to change. First, as a matter of philosophy, I, as a constitutional conservative, have great faith in the ideals articulated by our Founding Fathers. Their experience with the British monarchy, an all- powerful, centralized British Government in which people had little representation and no right to control their own lives and liberty, led them to establish--meaning, led our Founding Fathers to establish--a decentralized system of government, totally different from that of the British, that their government was meant to protect the freedoms of the citizenry. One of the most important tenets of this system of government was the idea that nearly all police power should be reserved to and exercised by the State and local governments. Yet today, Congress continues to fund an enormous Federal bureaucracy that is built around the idea that we--meaning, the Federal Government--can and should regulate what people may or may not choose to consume and has justified the Federal Government's establishing a Federal police force and justified Federal police actions directly on the citizens throughout our country. This is totally contrary to what our Founding Fathers meant. There was never an intent to have criminal law being taken care of by the Federal Government. All of our Founding Fathers would have opposed it and today would be supporting my legislation by bringing things back to the ideals which they had in mind of limited government, especially limiting the Federal Government's control directly over our lives. Tragically, these laws, the laws which have been implemented and the laws that have been encouraged by the Federal Government, these laws concerning marijuana, disproportionately impact on the poorest communities in our country. There is an incorrect perception that poor people, particularly people of color, disproportionately break Federal marijuana laws, leading to their disproportionate representation in Federal prisons. However, as I indicated, that is an incorrect perception. Statistics show that affluent citizens are just as likely to grow, sell, and use marijuana illegally as poor citizens. The sad difference between these two, however, is that the poorest among us are somehow unable to avoid prison time for similar offenses. There is much that can be said about why this is. Some may respond to this unfairness with the idea that we should just lock up more of the affluent young people and older people as frequently as we lock up their poor counterparts. Well, I happen to believe that the Federal Government shouldn't be locking up anyone for making a decision of what he or she should privately consume, whether that person is rich or poor, and we should never be giving people the excuse, especially Federal authorities, that they have a right to stop people or intrude into their lives in order to prevent them and prevent others from smoking a weed, consuming something they personally want to consume. We have been down this path before, of course. In the 1920s, a coalition of progressives and evangelical Christians thought it would be a good idea to institute a national prohibition on alcohol, which was something else that people can do in excess--and do in excess-- which hurts them when they do it in excess or when they do it when they are not totally in control, and they hurt their lives. People do hurt their lives on alcohol, no doubt about it, just like in all these other drugs and just as some people do on sugar, for example. But the motives of the movement, no matter how well intended, indeed, certainly they wanted to help the people that they were going to stop from drinking. But like most efforts to limit freedom, the freedom of Americans, they ultimately succeeded in convincing--they did convince--the country to enact an amendment to the Constitution that actually prohibited the production and sale of alcohol in the United States. What happened? Well, predictably, the policy failed at achieving its intended goal, which is trying to prevent people from consuming a liquid intoxicant, alcohol; and instead of just achieving that goal, instead it resulted in a torrent of collateral damage that harmed everybody in this country and created problems that we still have today. The rise of organized crime, the death of people consuming booze that was contaminated or otherwise deadly, that is what was going on during Prohibition. The mobster scene first arrived in America. We had organized crime. We had people who were consuming alcohol from stills, and they had no idea what company or what people were making this stuff that they were consuming. They ended up dying in great numbers, and we ended up with the Mob. Does that sound familiar? Fortunately, for future generations, the country wised up and repealed the Prohibition amendment just about a decade after it was put into place. Today, the scourge of marijuana prohibition has fueled organized crime here and south of our border and in our inner cities and throughout the world. We now have organized crime on steroids, and there is little that we can do to stop that because we keep feeding them with money by having outlawed drugs that people want to consume, and especially that drug that we are looking at tonight, which is marijuana. Yet despite the well-documented death and destruction permeated by organized crime, the two groups who are most tragically harmed by the Federal Government's intransigence--it is not necessarily the groups that they are trying to save, but, in reality, they are trying to save these people. They are putting them in jail. They are destroying people's lives in that way, but they are also victimizing American seniors and our veterans--yes, our veterans. The Federal Government remains so fixated on the need to restrict marijuana use that it has effectively promoted an opioid addiction. The possibility that marijuana might be a viable alternative to the management of pain and certain chronic disorders has been ignored and, yes, suppressed. Thus, we have senior citizens who are in their senior citizens homes, people over 70 and 80 years old, and they are being prohibited from using marijuana that might make their day a little bit easier or might bring back their appetite. Marijuana is now, instead, designated as a schedule I substance and has prevented any meaningful use that might be, as I say, for our senior citizens. It has also prevented a robust research of the drug to find out exactly what it could be used for in a positive way. Last year, to the credit of the Obama administration, at the insistence of myself and others here in Congress, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced a policy change to expand the number of DEA-registered marijuana manufacturers. That meant that they were able to expand that number. Historically, only the University of Mississippi had been registered with the DEA to produce marijuana for research purposes. Well, what we have had in the past has limited the research supply of marijuana both in quantity and in quality, making access particularly difficult to legitimate scientists and practitioners. Thus, we have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for us to get a full understanding: If there are dangers, what are they? If there are some potential positive uses of marijuana, what are they? Through the policy that we have had, it has been a negative impact on those people who are suffering who, needlessly, don't need to suffer. They do not need to suffer, whether they are our veterans coming home or whether it is our people who are basically older or are suffering from other types of diseases. The policy change that we have made is a positive step in the right direction so that now there can be more research into marijuana to find out what the dangers are and what the benefits can be. We now can expect that research to pick up to some degree, although barriers remain. It is unfortunate that barriers remain because a plethora of anecdotal evidence suggests that this plant and its constituent parts may offer relief from ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder, cancer, chronic pain, epilepsy, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis; and, yes, we know [[Page H1077]] that in some cases they have noted childhood problems where people go into seizures, and it has been effective in that. Why have we held marijuana back and not researched it even? This paranoia has had severe negative consequences on the American people, and that is not even considering the number of people whose lives have been affected. You arrest some person who doesn't have the money for a lawyer and they can't get it expunged from their record, for the rest of their lives they have lower pay and they have trouble getting jobs. We have trapped people in our poorer areas because we have put this stigma on them when what we are talking about is the consumption of a weed--not hurting somebody else, the personal consumption. I can't think of anything that our Founding Fathers thought that some people have a right to control their lives, especially what they consume. I, of course, don't agree that we should outlaw cups bigger than this because some people might drink more soda pop if we have bigger cups, no. People need to be responsible for their own lives. That is what freedom is all about, and that is when people will start being more careful about what they do. {time} 2015 Yes, we also know that marijuana can adversely affect the mental development of an adolescent brain. As such, it is vitally important to discourage our youth from chronic use. Right now the youth won't even believe what we are talking about half the time when it comes to marijuana. So now we need to establish our credibility that we are not being paranoid, we are being responsible, and we are being realistic. We need to discuss with our young people and discourage the chronic consumption of marijuana, just like we do when we discourage them from the chronic consumption of alcohol use, which also is bad for young people's brains. But the fact is we do not know more, and we need to know more, about the use of medical marijuana and the use of marijuana, period--both positive impacts and negative impacts. The fact that we don't know what it can be used for positively or what the negative impact is because we haven't done the research, that is a travesty. That is a travesty. It is a crime against older people who sit there and are being denied the use of something when they are over 70 or 80 years old that might enlighten their day and might bring back their appetite after they have had some sickness. It is a travesty when our veterans come home and they are given opiates instead of maybe something they can derive from marijuana. We need to research that. And our veterans end up killing themselves because now they are addicted to an opiate. The Federal Government should not stand in the way of the scientific community in learning more about marijuana. Many who oppose the change in course for Federal marijuana policy will cite any number of excuses: Oh, but it is dangerous if people use marijuana and then get behind the wheel of a car. Well, that is something that needs to be worked out. We need to make sure that we understand there are other challenges we have to face once marijuana is legal and how we are going to protect people from being in a situation. Well, I happen to believe that there will be no more people smoking marijuana and driving a car if it was legal than they are today. However, that may be an issue we need to look at. What we need to do is find ways to discourage young people from driving while drinking. Let's have drug testing in our schools not aimed at putting young people in jail, not aimed at saying: Oh, you have tested positive for marijuana, you are going to get arrested. By the way, you can't do that because you can't force these kids to testify against themselves by giving them a blood sample or a drug test. But you can do it in order to say: If you test positive for drugs, we are going to talk to your parents about it. If you test positive for drugs and you are in school, you are going to have to take a class to show you what you are doing to your brain. Ultimately, this is all about freedom. It is all about whether adults, not children, can use their decisionmaking process. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Too many people get so wrapped up in micromanaging our lives for our own benefit--of course, it is always for our own benefit--that sometimes they end up causing great harm to the people that they want to control for their own benefit. Well, many of my Republican colleagues have joined me in letting the States do this. That is right. I understand it. I respect them. I hope more will go along with the constitutional provision that those things not enumerated in the Constitution are powers that should be granted to the States. I hope that my Republican colleagues will join me in recognizing that, when we talk about individual freedom, this is what individual freedom is. It also includes individual responsibility on the other side of the coin. When we talk about limited government, we want limited government and we want government that is closest to the people, the State marijuana laws in the name of helping people. So that they won't consume a weed by their own choice, we are destroying all of those principles which we claimed as Republicans. I believe in those principles. I think my fellow Republicans do as well. That is why we need to talk about it and have this type of discussion that I am opening up tonight on the floor of the House. In fact, if someone says they believe in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution--we have heard it, and we will hear it in this body over and over again--let's send that back to the States. That is supposed to be a State rule of who is going to control the environment, who is going to control the gun laws or marriage laws, et cetera. We are going to hear that. But if someone really believes in the Tenth Amendment, they will respect the State marijuana laws, and let the States decide, and the people therein decide, what the laws should be. Remember, as we discuss people's health care, Republicans over and over again say: You shouldn't get in between a doctor and his patient. We believe in the doctor-patient relationship. That is true for medical marijuana as well. Do we believe in these principles? I say the Republican Party does believe in those principles. We need to have a discussion and we need to make sure that the American people understand that we are not just down here saying that we can control their life when we think it is best. No. We are down here because we do believe in liberty, we do believe in freedom, we do believe what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they decided not to follow the dictates of the king, not to permit the British government to establish control over their lives here in the United States that they had in Great Britain where they had fled from to get away from that type of authority. We do not want to have Federal police--no matter what they call them, DEA or anything else--down in our cities and our towns conducting law enforcement operations. That is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind. They had in mind also that people would be responsible for themselves. Yes, when people are free, some of them are going to make wrong decisions in their lives. We need to make sure that we understand that when we legalize medical marijuana, or even recreational use of marijuana, some people will hurt themselves, just like with alcohol. It is up to us not to try to put them in jail, not to try to hurt them, not to try to force them to do what we want, but to try to reach out to them, to help people who are in need, help people make the right decision in our churches and our schools. This is the way to conduct when you have a problem that threatens to bring down the society, not establishing a Federal Gestapo to go and enforce laws that are going to make everybody just prim and proper. I am sorry. What we need is to reassert what our Founding Fathers had in mind for America: limited government, personal responsibility, individual freedom, and, yes, the Tenth Amendment. I would ask my Republican colleagues to join me in supporting the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. It presents us with a unique opportunity to support legislation that responds to [[Page H1078]] our constituent demands because across America, people are understanding the reality of this. They don't want to put people in jail, they don't want to have Federal law strike forces in their community just to prevent adults from consuming a weed in their backyard. It makes no sense at all. They know that people, once they are arrested for just smoking a weed that is not hurting anybody else, their lives are damaged and it is harder for them to become a decent citizen. Americans are concerned about each other, and we know we can't just leave it up to the government to control our lives. With that said, I hope that my colleagues support this legislation and support Congressman Blumenauer and myself and others in the Cannabis Caucus that is being established in order to be consistent with the goals and ideals of American liberty to make sure that we have limited government and unlimited freedom in this country. That is what America was supposed to be all about. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________
from 2015… See orignal post here.
Despite Congress’s clear intent in passing the amendment, the Department of Justice did not stop prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers. In April, Reps. Rohrabacher and Farr sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to inform him that using any funds to go after medical marijuana patients and providers is a violation of federal law. The Department of Justice has yet to respond to the letter.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, a co-sponsor of the amendment, said:
“With more support than ever before, today’s passage of the Rohrabacher-Farr medical marijuana amendment is a monumental victory in a revolution under way across America to reform and modernize our marijuana laws. Well over 200 million Americans have access to legal medical marijuana, and at least one million people use it in accordance with state laws. Removing the threat of interference from the lives of patients, businesses and doctors in the 41 jurisdictions that have approved medical marijuana is the right thing to do.”
The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment was cosponsored by Reps. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Joe Heck, R-Nev., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., Don Young, R-Alaska, Jared Polis, D-Colo., Tom McClintock, R-Calif., Dina Titus, D-Nev.
Related: c-span coverage