The Editorial Board
About 64 percent of all
Americans — 207 million of the nation’s 325 million people — live in
states where marijuana is legal for prescribed medical use, and about 20
percent live in states where it also is legal for recreational use.
Yet at the federal level, marijuana remains illegal for any use
as a Schedule I controlled substance.
That contradiction is harmful to
individuals who legally use marijuana under their state’s laws. It also
harms the economies of those states because pot’s illegal status at the
federal level makes it difficult for the industry to use federally
regulated financial institutions to conduct business.
The Obama administration had a policy not to interfere in
states that legalized pot, other than against illegal distributors or
others who violate the state laws.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rescinded that policy and
has vowed to aggressively enforce federal marijuana laws regardless of
the laws in the 29 states that have approved medicinal use of marijuana
and the five that also have approved it for recreational use.
A recent Supreme Court ruling on state sanctioned sports
betting raises a question as to whether Sessions can pursue his anti-pot
agenda. The court ruled that the federal government may not dictate to
states what they may not do, striking the federal law that had
proscribed states from approving sports betting. If the federal
government cannot command states not to legalize sports betting, it
seems likely that it can’t command them not to legalize and regulate
marijuana use. The federal law has not yet been challenged on those
grounds.
Meanwhile, bills in both House of Congress approach the bill
from another direction. A bipartisan House bill would prevent federal
prosecution of anyone for pot use that complies with the relevant state
law. Other bills go further, removing marijuana from the federal illegal
drug schedule, reversing convictions for personal use or possession and
even providing job-training funds for workers in the rapidly expanding
legal pot industry.
Whatever the mechanism, Congress at least should decriminalize pot in states that decide to do so.
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