Providing for Consideration of H.R. Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments and his courtesy.

Listening to my colleague from Arizona sort of made my head hurt. This legislation does not legalize cannabis across the country. What it does is it stops the Federal Government from interfering with what States have decided to do.

No small amount of irony, her State just approved legalizing cannabis. And this legislation would prevent the Federal Government from interfering with what her voters decided.

I have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. I was in the Oregon legislature when we were the first State to decriminalize cannabis. I have been working from Bangor, Maine, to Santa Barbara ever since trying to end the failed prohibition of cannabis.

It is happening today, because it has been demanded by the voters, by facts, by the momentum behind this issue.

It is now a $17 billion industry. It employs 250,000 people. It is powerful in terms of economic development.

More important, as my friend from Massachusetts said, this is an opportunity to strike a blow against the failed war on drugs that has literally destroyed hundreds of thousands of young Black lives. Black people use cannabis no more frequently than Whites, but they are arrested about four more times, and in some parts of the country, it is much, much greater.

We are still arresting or citing 600,000 people a year for something that the majority of Americans now think should be legal. That is why the voters in this country took it into their own hands. That is why today, 99 percent of the American population have some access to legalized cannabis.

This will help us set up a system moving forward. It will stop the interference by the Federal Government for research, for banking, for being able to promote an opportunity to make this work properly and not interfere with what voters in States have decided to do in the best interest of their public.

I really appreciate our being at this point. The legislation was carefully crafted over the course of two years with the Judiciary Committee. It comes on the heels of other legislation, like the Safe Banking Act, and we have research legislation that is moving forward. Five States, including Arizona, just approved it.

Mr. Speaker, this is a historic moment. It is an important step towards rationalizing the policy, towards racial justice, towards health, so that maybe the parents in my neighborhood don't have to formulate cannabis medicine to stop their babies from being tortured by extreme seizure disorder.

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, that is why a number of States that haven't yet legalized cannabis have passed legislation to legalize that.

This is an opportunity for us to right this historic wrong. This is an opportunity for us to turn the page and move forward without Federal interference so that we are not outsourcing the product development to Canada or Israel. It is an opportunity for us to realize the promise while we realize the notion of racial justice.

I urge, in the strongest possible terms, for my colleagues to get in step with the vast majority of the American public, with what has happened at the State level, to be able to make this safe, affordable, and healthy, something that will make a big difference for people across the country. It is something for which time is long overdue, and I herald the day and hope that my colleagues will vote for it.

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