In 2003, Reps. Maurice Hinchey, Dana Rohrabacher, and Sam Farr produced a piece of legislation aimed at preventing the Justice Department spending money to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana (MMJ) programs. After failing six times, it finally became law in 2014 as part of an omnibus spending bill. The full text thus incorporated read:
“None of the funds made available in this Act to the Department of Justice may be used, with respect to the States of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
The medical marijuana lobby hailed this as a victory for MMJ, and proof the battle was over finally. But, was it? The text was time-based, just like the omnibus spending bill that required refreshment every year.
Last April, when the bill was up for annual review Dana Rohrabacher and thirty Congress Reps wrote the subcommittee reminding it to include aforesaid wording in the measure. It did appear for a while in the base text, says Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SMA), but then it mysteriously went walkabout in the halls of Congress. The June 28 version has not a puff of it remaining, and this has set a flock of chickens loose in the proverbial marijuana field.
SMA wants marijuana policies ‘aligned with the scientific understanding of marijuana’s harms’ and an end to ‘commercialization and normalization.’ Westword writes that SAM was arguing against the language, and the subcommittee pulled it from the draft. The SMA president needless to say waxed ecstatic about their success, but that’s only half the argument.
Rohrabacher and Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer issued their own press release arguing the text always added manually by amendment and was never a permanent feature of the omnibus spending bill. Blumenauer added, “The folks at SMA clearly don’t understand the legislative process. Our amendment has never been in the CJS Subcommittee’s bill. There is no news here. We are exactly where we thought we would be in the legislative process.”
Right now, we are facing a standoff between the two sides. Blumenauer’s latest statement on the matter was, “Voters in states across the country have acted to legalize medical marijuana. Congress should not act against the will of the people who elected us.” The words are still ringing in our ears, but we shall have to wait and see what transpires next.