The House of Representatives will vote on a bill to legalize marijuana federally this week, according to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who listed it as a House item of business for the week. Marijuana Moment reported that he said the House would discuss the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act between Wednesday evening and Friday of this week.
The MORE Act decriminalizes marijuana by removing it from the list of scheduled substances, and removes criminal penalties for manufacturing, distributing, or possessing marijuana across the United States. Multiple states have legalized marijuana, ranging from medical uses to recreational uses, and some states legalized marijuana in the recent election.
Rep. Hoyer previously said that the bill would be heard before the end of the year, according to the article, this came after he said the House would vote on the bill in September. The September vote was delayed after some worried about passing a marijuana bill before a COVID-19 pandemic relief bill. The MORE Act will likely be heard before the House Rules Committee in the early part of the week, and go to the House floor for action after the committee decides which amendments should go to the floor with the bill.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said in a press release that Congress should use the current momentum from legalizing marijuana to help the bill pass. “I’ve been working on this issue longer than any politician in America and can confidently say that the MORE Act is the most comprehensive federal cannabis reform legislation in U.S. history … Our vote to pass it next week will come after people in five very different states reaffirmed the strong bipartisan support to reform the failed cannabis prohibition. National support for federal cannabis legalization is at an all-time high and almost 99 percent of Americans will soon live in states with some form of legal cannabis,” Blumenaur said.
The bill also replaces statutory references to cannabis, requires demographic data on cannabis businesses to be published, imposes a 5% tax on cannabis products, and makes Small Business Administration loans available for cannabis-related businesses. It also creates a process for expunging previous cannabis convictions.
