The Lower House of the United States Congress approved this Friday a bill to eliminate marijuana from the federal list of dangerous drugs, a historic step towards its decriminalization already effective in many states.
(Read: Traffic accidents in the US register their highest figures in 60 years)
The text, called the MORE Act, was voted along party lines (220 in favor, 204 against), and only three Republicans joined the Democratic majority.
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But approval in the Senate will be more difficult, since the Democrats need the votes of 10 Republican senators.
This is the second time the text has been presented in the House of Representatives. It had been approved in December 2020 by the Democratic majority but was never presented in the Senate, then controlled by the Republicans.
The MORE Act would decriminalize at the federal level the possession, sale and production of marijuana, currently considered by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as equivalent to LSD, cocaine or heroin, despite the fact that more than three quarters of US states have legalized its use for medical purposes and a third allow it for recreational purposes.
It would also overturn federal misdemeanor drug convictions.which advocates say lead to mass incarceration that primarily affects minorities.
The text would also introduce a tax -of 5% and that will reach 8%- on the sale of marijuana and its derivatives, to finance the care and reintegration of the victims, mostly Afro-Americans, of the war against drugs initiated by the authorities of the country in the 1980s.
The project “considers marijuana as a public health problem rather than a crime and would serve to correct the high cost that its criminalization causes in disadvantaged communities and communities of color,” said Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler, the main author of the proposal.
The pro-cannabis organization NORML welcomed the vote, saying “it is high time to stop punishing adults for consuming a substance that is objectively safer than alcohol.”
Driving under the influence
Aaron Smith, of the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), congratulated the parliamentarians for “acting once again to modernize our federal policy regarding marijuana”.
He asked the Senate to also approve the text “to end the error of prohibition and promote a well-regulated cannabis market.”
The prohibition of marijuana at the federal level makes it difficult to expand its production and its legal trade.
According to pro-marijuana information site Leafly, the booming industry was worth $25 billion and employed 321,000 people in 2021.
But banks remain reluctant to finance producers or sellers for fear of being prosecuted for money laundering. Opponents of the text insist on the dangers of addiction, especially among young people, and traffic accidents by drivers who have consumed it.
An amendment provides $10 million for a study of technologies that would allow law enforcement to determine if a driver was under the influence of cannabis.
Parliamentarians also approved studies on the impact of the legalization of cannabis in the workplace and in schools to “protect children from any negative effects” of the reform.
Marijuana legalization is hugely popular in the United States, with a 91% approval rate of Americans, according to a Pew Research Institute survey last year.
But in practice, if the law were passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden, marijuana would not be legal across the country, and individual states would still be able to prosecute their citizens under state law.
Marijuana is already legal in some countries, and in December 2020 the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) also removed it from its list of most dangerous drugs, on which it had been for 59 years and which discouraged its use for medical purposes.
AFP
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