WASHINGTON–Two Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill in Congress to federally legalize marijuana, protect banks that service state-legal cannabis business and ensure military veterans are specifically permitted to use marijuana in compliance with state laws.
The Common Sense Cannabis Reform for Veterans, Small Businesses, and Medical Professionals Act is being backed by Reps. David Joyce (R-OH) and Don Young (R-AK).
Beyond just descheduling cannabis, the legislation goes further than earlier legislation with specific language on legal protections and mandates for federal studies into medical cannabis, according to analysts.
“With more than 40 states taking action on this issue, it’s past time for Congress to recognize that continued cannabis prohibition is neither tenable nor the will of the American electorate,” Joyce, co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus (CCC), said in a released statement.
Additional Provisions
Under the proposal, marijuana would be removed from the Controlled Substances Act, clearing states to enact legalization. Cannabis could be imported and exported across states, though transporting marijuana to states where such activity is unlawful would remain federally prohibited.
The legislation would also require two agencies—the Food and Drug Administration and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, to be responsible for developing regulations for cannabis. Those rules would have to be “similar to federal rules regulating alcohol,” the text of the bill states, and they would have to be issued within one year of enactment.
“For too long, the federal government’s outdated cannabis policies have stood in the way of both individual liberty and a state’s 10th Amendment rights,” said Young in the same statement. “It is long past time that these archaic laws are updated for the 21st Century.”
Call for a Study
Other provisions of the measure stipulate that financial institutions that work with state-legal marijuana businesses cannot be penalized by federal regulators, specify that military veterans are able to use, possess and transport medical cannabis in compliance with state law, and permit physicians to discuss medical marijuana use with veterans if legal states and they can “recommend, complete forms for, or register veterans for participating in a treatment program involving medical marijuana.”
The legislation also calls on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to “conduct or support a study on the effects of medical marijuana on individuals in pain or who are impaired” and issue a report on its findings within 180 of the study’s completion.