Meet the new Republican cannabis caucus of Congress
The introduction of a new Republican-led marijuana legalization bill last week was not just a conservative response to existing Democratic proposals. It also acted as the coming-out party for the new generation of GOP legalization advocates.
The States Reform Act is a coming-out party for a new generation of Republican legalization advocates.
Rep. Nancy Mace got the most media attention for her work last week, and rightly so. The Charleston Congresswoman deserves credit for advocating an issue that far too many of her fellow Republican compatriots, even in her own state, reject or ignore.
Mace’s bill, the State Reform Act (HR 5977), removes cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances, allows states to regulate it at will, introduces a federal tax of 3%, and focuses tax revenues on law enforcement rather than equity programs.
It also performs an extremely important role: the bill proposed by Mace provides protection for a new generation of elected Republicans ready to end Prohibition. That’s huge. Until now, democratic proposals have dominated the cannabis discussion in Congress. The States Reform Act provides a Republican-led vehicle that enables GOP members to publicly support the legalization movement.
Mace’s Act was inaugurated with four Republican co-sponsors. They are:
- Representative Brian Mast (R-FL)
- Representative Peter Meijer (R-MI)
- Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Representative Don Young (R-AK)
Two of them – Alaska Rep. Don Young and California Rep. Tom McClintock – have been openly campaigning for legalization for years. The others are relatively new to the field, have demonstrated the ability to work with Democrats, and represent the mainstream of the post-Trump GOP.
Together they form a new and unofficial republican cannabis caucus. They are a fascinating bunch.
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Meet Nancy Mace, Chair of the Caucus
Nancy Mace is different: a former Waffle House waitress who became the first woman to graduate from the Citadel. Breakthrough The Citadel – the formerly all-male military academy in South Carolina that has long been one of America’s most conservative boys’ clubs – showed their courage, and after a brief career in consulting, it is now making waves in Congress.
Mace is young and very Trump-oriented. But she breaks the Trump line when it comes to environmental protection, where she has a record that is kinder to the Sierra Club than Exxon. The South Carolina Conservation Voters gave Mace a 100% Lifetime Rating in part for opposing oil drilling off the coast of South Carolina.
At the same time, the corporate-backed Club for Growth in South Carolina campaigned heavily for Mace and awarded her the Taxpayer Hero Award 2019. This low-tax philosophy is reflected in Mace’s Legalization Act, which sets the federal cannabis tax rate at 3%, far lower than that 10% to 25% proposed by the Democrats.
Brian Mast: Florida veteran with an independent streak
Brian Mast represents a prime district in Florida that includes Palm Beach Counties and Port St. Lucie. That is powerful republican territory. He, too, is an up-and-coming GOP politician of the new generation, a military veteran who lost both legs in the fight in Afghanistan.
Mast was also able to work out a niche position vis-à-vis the party line. He broke with the GOP’s NRA-led gun control line in 2018 after the mass shooting of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, not far from his home district.
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Peter Meijer: Michigan moderate who defends democracy
Peter Meijer represents the good people in and around Grand Rapids, Michigan, a classic Republican town on Main Street whose favorite son, President Gerald Ford, embodied moderate Republican values that seem radically quaint by today’s standards.
Meijer has shown that he is ready to work across party lines (see photo above) and is ready to defend democracy, even if the rest of the GOP refuses. Meijer was one of 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted for President Donald Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. As a result, he recently attracted a Trump-backed challenger who was personally backed by the former president.
Meijer was born into the family that started the Meijer Supercenter chain, one of the dominant retailers in the upper Midwest. He successfully challenged Republican MP Justin Amash, who lost his seat after losing his favor with President Trump by demanding Trump’s impeachment.
It so happened that Amash was one of the few Republican Congressmen to have called for the federal legalization of cannabis.
Tom McClintock: California-led bipartisan legalization effort
Tom McClintock is a six-year-old Congressman whose California borough includes the eastern suburbs of Sacramento and much of the Sierra Nevada region. He has been one of the strongest supporters of the legalization movement for several years.
In 2016, McClintock supported Proposition 64, the initiative that legalized cannabis use for all adults. In 2017 and 2018, he worked with Democratic MP Jared Polis to protect medical patients and adults in legal states from federal arrest and prosecution.
Don Young, the classic car from Alaska
Young is a holdover from an earlier generation of Republican legalization advocates. It was a group of hardened old curses like Young, the ancient Fort Yukon bear hunter, and former MP Dana Rohrabacher, the Reagan-era Conservative who indulged in his role as a political provocateur.
“I’m a passionate supporter of the states legal approach to cannabis,” Young said in a news release last week. “For too long, the federal government has stood in the way of states that have their own cannabis guidelines. It is long time to update our cannabis laws for the 21st century. My state legalized adult cannabis in 2014, and as Alaska’s only representative in the House of Representatives and co-chair of the Cannabis Caucus, I am proud to help put the law into law reforming the state. “
Young is the senior Republican in the House of Representatives.
A new breed of republican legalization law
Mace’s States Reform Act is seen as a serious effort, in part because the bill contains similar measures to the MORE Act and Sen. Chuck Schumer’s legalization proposal, while offering interesting twists like the lower federal tax rate. Timing also matters: the Republican-led move is a way to start negotiations on what some GOP members would find acceptable in a merged omnibus legalization bill at a time when a legalization bill (the MORE Act) was actually only was passed a few months ago in the House of Representatives.
Previous Republican legalization efforts were largely limited to solitary, abandoned, one-off bills. The last one we saw was the Common Sense Cannabis Reform Act, which was co-sponsored by Rep. David Joyce (R-OH) and Rep. Don Young. It wasn’t going anywhere. (Rep. Justin Amash filed a legalization bill on his way to the door in 2019, but had already given up his Republican affiliation and filed the bill as an independent.)
It’s unclear why Rep. Joyce, who still represents Ohio’s 14th district (the suburbs of Cleveland and parts of the east), hasn’t signed Mace’s new bill yet. As a non-partisan friendly Republican, Joyce seems to be a perfect fit for this new generation of GOP legalization advocates.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz was the sole Republican co-sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which the House of Representatives successfully passed in late 2020. Since then, however, Gaetz has been the target of an investigation into possible sex trafficking, and no reputable bill sponsor seeks his approval or signature for obvious reasons.
Can Schumer or Biden advance this?
After President Biden signs the $ 1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, there may be room for consideration of a legalization proposal that has enough Democratic and Republican votes to move forward in the Senate.
Biden loves to talk about bipartisan solutions to America’s problems. This is where the rubber comes out on the road. This new crew of Republicans is stepping down and supporting national cannabis legalization. They are party members who have proven that they can defy the existing party line on certain issues. They are the new members of the de facto republican cannabis caucus. You’re not here to score at Tucker Carlson Tonight. You are here to legalize.
The Democrats in Congress and Chief Democrat Biden should prepare to work with them.
Bruce Barcott
Leafly Senior Editor Bruce Barcott oversees news, research, and feature projects. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America.
View article by Bruce Barcott
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