As the cannabis industry continues to boom, the House of Representatives just voted in favor of removing marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act.
According to CNN, the House of Representatives has approved legislation that would decriminalize marijuana and seek to “address the devastating injustices caused by the War on Drugs.”
The House vote earlier today on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, or MORE Act, which decriminalizes cannabis and clears the way to erase nonviolent federal marijuana convictions. However, experts are warning that the Senate is unlikely to approve the bill.
Today’s vote in the Democratic-led House is the first time a chamber of Congress has voted on federal marijuana decriminalization, but it already faces a very small chance of passing in the Republican-led Senate.
The bill was passed largely along party lines: 222 Democrats, five Republicans, and Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian, voted in support, while 158 Republicans and six Democrats voted against it.
“Millions of Americans’ lives have been upended as a result of convictions for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and the racial disparities in conviction rates for those offenses are as shocking as they are unjust,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement after the vote. “That’s why we passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act today.”
The MORE Act also creates pathways for ownership opportunities in this emerging industry. The act allows veterans to obtain medical cannabis recommendations from Veteran Affairs doctors and establishes funding sources through a 5% sales tax to reinvest in communities disproportionately affected by the federal government’s war on drugs.
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