Senators urge AG Merrick Garland to decriminalize cannabis |

Two U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging the Justice Department to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level. In the letter, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged Garland to remove cannabis from the state’s list of drugs regulated under federal controlled substances law.

“Decriminalizing cannabis at the federal level through this de-planning process would allow states to regulate cannabis at their discretion, undo the damage caused by decades of racial differences in the enforcement of cannabis laws, and facilitate valuable medical research,” Warren et al Booker in her October 6 letter to Garland. “As Congress works to pass major cannabis reform, you can act now to decriminalize cannabis.”

The Democratic Senators wrote that under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) Garland had the authority to “remove a substance from the CSA list in consultation with the Department of Health and Welfare (HHS)”. Booker and Warren said the move would meet public opinion, noting that 91 percent of American adults support legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Senators’ letter also notes that more than two-thirds of states have initiated cannabis reform, with 36 legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Of them, 18 have also passed laws legalizing cannabis for adult use. The reforms came without an increase in traffic accidents, violent crime or use by young people, “which would pave the way for urgently needed measures at the federal level”.

Racial Inequality and the War on Drugs

Warren and Booker also cited data from the American Civil Liberties Union showing that black Americans are three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite similar use rates among the groups. The effects of different enforcement of cannabis prohibition laws include not only arrest, prosecution, and incarceration, but also collateral damage such as job loss, housing, financial assistance, child custody, and immigration status.

“Federal cannabis policy has disproportionately affected the ability of people of color in the United States to vote, educate, and build wealth across generations,” claim Booker and Warren. “You can start repairing the damage cannabis criminalization has done to color communities by using your legal and regulatory agencies to move this drug.”

The Senators also noted in their letter that legalizing cannabis will make it easier as a treatment option for serious illnesses such as chronic pain, PTSD, and incurable diseases. Given that federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse have recognized that THC and CBD have proven medicinal uses, Warren and Booker argued that decriminalizing cannabis was “critical to facilitating scientific research and would be invaluable to doctors ”. and patients across the country. “

Summing up their rationale for reforming marijuana policy, Booker and Warren “urged the DOJ to initiate the process of decriminalizing cannabis.”

“This would be an important first step in the broader work of eradicating the harmful racial effects of cannabis law enforcement in our country and ensuring that states can effectively regulate the growing cannabis industry, including helping small business owners and those most severely harmed by us “Historic Enforcement of Cannabis Laws,” they continued.

Keep a campaign promise

Re-planning cannabis under the CSA, or removing cannabis entirely from the list through actions by Garland and the executive branch, would allow the Biden government to implement its pledges to reform marijuana policy during the 2020 presidential campaign. During his candidacy, President Joe Biden pledged to “decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically overturn all previous convictions of cannabis use.”

In an April press conference, White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated Biden’s support for federal cannabis reform. However, she noted that the president prefers decriminalization of marijuana to full legalization.

“The President supports leaving decisions about legalization for recreational use to the states; Rescheduling cannabis as a List II drug to allow researchers to study its positive and negative effects; and at the federal level, he supports the decriminalization of marijuana use and the automatic erasure of all previous convictions, “Psaki told reporters. “He also supports the legalization of medical marijuana.”

However, critics say Biden’s stance on cannabis is behind the times.

“Its marijuana policy is very out of date, very out of date,” Martiza Perez, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Portland Press Herald. “I think that’s just his personal belief. If he is convinced by science, science tells us that marijuana has positive therapeutic and medicinal effects, but he still seems very reluctant to just take it. ”