The House of Representatives approved legislation on March 30 that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and eliminate criminal penalties for certain cannabis-related offenses.
The House approved the legislation by a vote of 220-204.
According to a Pew Research Center poll in April 2021, 8% of respondents believe marijuana should not be legal for use by adults. A total of 31% of people surveyed said that it should be legal for medical use only. In contrast, 60% of those polled said marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use.
“There have long been age and partisan differences in views about marijuana, which remains the case today,” Pew Research said. “Very few adults of any age are completely opposed to the legalization of marijuana. However, older adults are far less likely than young people to favor marijuana legalization for recreational use.”
On the Democratic side of the aisle, U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, voted against the marijuana legalization bill that passed the House on Friday, the Texas Tribune reports. Cuellar is seeking his tenth term against attorney Jessica Cisneros. According to the Texas Tribune, Cuellar was the only Democrat who voted against federal pro-abortion legislation last fall.
The only other Democrat who voted “no” was Representative Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, according to KHN.org.
On the Republican side of the aisle, House Representatives Tom McClintock (California), Brian Mast (Florida), and Matt Gaetz (Florida) bucked their party’s trend of voting against the H.R.3884 — dubbed “The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act” or the MORE Act of 2020.
After the legislation passed on March 30, The New York Times reported that despite the support of the majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the legislation was unlikely to receive the sixty votes needed to pass the Senate. According to Yahoo News, a similar bill passed the House in 2020 but died in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The bill was introduced to address marijuana-related federal convictions, tax cannabis producers and importers, and prevent the federal government from denying security clearances based on marijuana use. Current U.S. marijuana laws led to more than 1.5 million arrests in 2019 alone, 32% of which were for nonviolent, lower-level marijuana possession offenses, according to ABC News.
According to CNET, three-quarters of states have legalized marijuana to some extent. The recreational market alone, which reached nearly $15 billion in 2021, is expected to exceed $25 billion by 2025. However, the use, possession, and sale of cannabis are still illegal under federal law. The disparity between state and federal laws has resulted in a significant schism, which many lawmakers are eager to bridge, CNET reports.