Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP Photo
From left, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) announce a draft bill that would decriminalize marijuana on the federal level, July 14, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Last month, historic cannabis legislation passed Congress. The Senate and the House each passed bills to expand marijuana and cannabidiol research. The lack of research studies has long been a key obstacle in figuring out the extent of cannabis benefits and harms. The legislation would allow higher-education institutions, practitioners, and manufacturers to possess and distribute marijuana for medical research. It would thereby give scientists and others the long-sought tools to study marijuana for the treatment of epilepsy and other conditions, and evaluate the drug’s effects on adolescent brains and on people’s ability to drive vehicles safely. The Drug Enforcement Administration would register marijuana researchers and monitor the scientific supply. The Senate and House are currently working to reconcile the two bills before sending the legislation to President Biden.
Removing research restrictions is a monumental step, but what voters across the political spectrum, and especially people under 25, are waiting for is the end of prohibition. The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA) offers that pathway. The mammoth federal regulatory proposal, introduced in July by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Ron Wyden of Oregon, would end the federal prohibition of marijuana and remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act.
The Supreme Court’s revocation of abortion rights and the rush of red states to ban it altogether have opened the eyes of young voters to the perils of sideline-sitting at election time. President Biden’s decision to forgive $10,000 of student loan debt may also energize more young people to vote in the midterm elections. But failure to deliver on a slam-dunk issue like the federal decriminalization of marijuana could convince other voters to skip the general election.
Capitol Hill has been tinkering around the edges of marijuana reform for several years with little success. The House has been busier, passing on two separate occasions the MORE Act, which proposed to decriminalize marijuana, end federal penalties for cannabis offenses, and erase federal convictions. The SAFE Banking Act, a corporatized tour de force that enables businesses to place their proceeds from selling cannabis in federally insured banks, has passed the House a remarkable six times, demonstrating that nothing has bipartisan appeal like facilitating capitalists’ designs on a new exciting product line expected to deliver $45 billion in annual sales by 2025. But still, thanks to the Senate’s accustomed inaction, they sit and spin.
The CAOA proposal includes the marquee descheduling provision that removes cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and transfers its regulation from the Drug Enforcement Administration to the oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration. It establishes a Center for Cannabis Products to regulate the industry, requires medical research into dozens of areas, redresses the harms that the “War on Drugs” has had in affected communities, establishes standards for safe driving, and ends pre-employment and random drug testing for many federal jobs. And that’s just for starters.
In a statement provided exclusively to the Prospect, Sen. Wyden calls CAOA “cannabis reform done right.” He continues:
By descheduling cannabis, our bill empowers states to set their own laws and it fixes the myriad of issues caused by current prohibition, like banking and research. But it goes even further by setting up a federal regulatory system to protect public health and safety, all while prioritizing restorative and economic justice to help undo decades of harm.
A 50-50 majority in the Senate will make passing our bill a difficult feat, but I hope we can at minimum pass some key reforms this Congress. This is a winning issue that is overwhelmingly backed by the American people, especially young voters, who understand how ridiculous and unfair it is for folks to be locked away for something that most states have legalized and almost everyone thinks should be legal.
As Wyden notes, the way forward in the weeks ahead (especially with the midterm clock running out) likely entails breaking off chunks of CAOA. Those could include SAFE Banking provisions, expungement incentives for states and localities, access to Small Business Administration programs, additional research provisions, and specific measures affecting veterans’ health.
Currently, recreational marijuana is legal in 19 states and medical marijuana in 39. An astonishing majority of Americans agree that marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational purposes. A July Gallup poll found that more than 50 percent of people 18 to 34 regularly use some type of marijuana product. Legalization is popular with young people, but it depends on who you ask: Americans ages 25 to 29 support legal cannabis by a 50 percent to 28 percent margin, with 21 percent unsure. Among people 18 to 24, the figure drops to 38 percent, with 39 percent opposed and 22 percent unsure. (On abortion and student debt relief, young people are much more uniformly aligned: 78 percent of young people support legal abortion, while 85 percent support some type of student loan debt relief.)
In recent years, Republican prohibitionists have not been able to translate their attacks on marijuana into the state regulatory prohibitions that they favor, so they have moved into their arena of preferred combat with proven success: the courts. (Those who were surprised by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization should take note.)
In Missouri and Arkansas, the prohibitionists have asked state courts to halt constitutional amendment questions headed for the November ballot. Missouri cannabis opponents have contested whether legalization supporters collected enough valid signatures to put their measure on the ballot. In Arkansas, the state Supreme Court ordered the certification of a ballot initiative currently facing a legal challenge. The question will appear on the ballot, but depending on the outcome of the court challenge the votes may not be tallied.
As for two other November contests, polls show Maryland voters overwhelmingly support legalization. South Dakota voters will take a second try at legalizing cannabis. Polls show that South Dakota’s conservative voters disapprove of Gov. Kristi Noem’s role in overturning the state’s successful 2021 legalization vote.
Also worth watching are several Senate races in swing states that pit prohibitionists against legalizers. In Wisconsin, where Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, Barnes supports legalization and has tweeted, “Every day that passes without marijuana legalization in Wisconsin is a day that injustices go uncorrected and our economy misses out on a $33 billion industry.”
In Pennsylvania, Politico reported that the campaign of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrats’ senatorial nominee, sells T-shirts with the slogan “It’s high time that we get our sh*t together and legalize weed in PA + USA. More justice, jobs, revenue, and freedom.” In the race between Fetterman and GOP nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz, Jason Ortiz, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, believes that some positive momentum in Washington in the direction of legalizing cannabis could help swing the race to Fetterman.
In the Georgia Senate race, Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock supports decriminalization, expungement for nonviolent cannabis offenders, and new supports for communities hard-hit by drug dealing and the related policing. Herschel Walker has knocked Vice President Kamala Harris for “Incarcera[ing] thousands for marijuana charges & then bragged she smoked weed listening to rappers who weren’t even known yet!” in a two-year-old tweet, but has very little to say about drug policy on his bare-bones website.
Cannabis descheduling by Congress or by a presidential executive order might serve as a motivational lever for both young potential voters and other unmotivated ones, demonstrating what they can expect next year if Democrats remain in power—or what they can expect if the Republicans take one or both houses of Congress. Ortiz notes that there appears to be less Democratic Party investment in youth organizing than in previous years, as well as a reliance on dubious outreach strategies employing traditional media including Facebook (Facebook!) that young people have long since abandoned en masse.
On this issue, the Democrats’ electoral problem centers on President Biden. He has failed to issue executive orders that could deschedule cannabis or move marijuana out of the most restrictive tier of the controlled substances. Members of the White House staff have been purged for marijuana use. The president appears too steeped in his own War on Drugs history and family addiction journey to understand that attitudes on cannabis have shifted dramatically.
“I do think it is 100 percent personal: Joe Biden does not agree regardless of everybody else,” Ortiz says. “But the point that is more confusing is the polling,” he continues. “If you look at Joe Biden’s approval rating anywhere, and poll cannabis legalization in the exact same place, cannabis legalization will outperform Joe Biden in every single place in the country.”
