44 US House Members Tell The DOJ To Shove It

US House Members Fight To Keep DOJ Off Marijuana States

DOJ and weed laws

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher leads a bipartisan group of 44 members of the house who are keeping the DOJ’s hands off states that have legalized medical marijuana.

Rohrabacher, a Republican politician who hails from the Golden State, announced on Monday that he is persuading the heads of Commerce, Justice, and Science to maintain the status quo. Rohrabacher authored a letter co-signed by Rep Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, and 42 other members from the House of Representatives asking the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science as well as other related agencies to include this text on the fiscal year 2018 spending bill:

None of the funds made available in this Act to the Department of Justice may be used to enforce federal prohibitions involving the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes that are permitted by the laws of the state, the District of Columbia, or U.S. territory where the act was committed, or to prevent states, the District of Columbia, or U.S. territories from implementing their own laws that permit the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes.

The text has been in the House appropriation bills since 2014 based on a majority vote, which has been adopted using similar language by the Senate Committee on Appropriations in 2015. “We believe that the consistent, bipartisan support for such protections against federal enforcement, combined with the fact that similar language has been in place since December 2014, make a strong case for including similar language in your base FY 2018 appropriations bill,” Rohrabacher wrote.

The 2017 amendment, previously known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, will now be known as Rohrabacher – Bluemenauer since the original bill’s co-author Sam Farr, a democratic from California, left office last year.

The Rohrabacher-Bluemenauer amendment isn’t free of contention. According to the Smart Approaches to Marijuana action, an anti-marijuana legalization movement, they would suggest to cross-reference every member of the House who has signed the letter to include proof of their contributions to the industry. “We intend to investigate the legislators who do the pot industry’s bidding,” Kevin Sabet, president of the group, told The Cannabist. “The American people should know who is doing the bidding of an industry whose goal is to promote addiction for profit.”

The complete list of signatories by state include the following:

ALASKA
Don Young (R-AK)

CALIFORNIA
Salud Carbajal (D-CA)
Jared Huffman (D-CA)
Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
Tom McClintock (R-CA)
Jimmy Panetta (D-CA)
Scott Peters (D-CA)
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Eric Swalwell (D-CA)

COLORADO
Mike Coffman (R-CO)
Diana DeGette (D-CO)
Jared Polis (D-CO)
Ed Perlmutter (D-CO)

FLORIDA
Darren Soto (D-FL)
Ted Yoho (R-FL)

HAWAII
Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)

ILLINOIS
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

IOWA
Rod Blum (R-IA)

KENTUCKY
Thomas Massie (R-KY)

MARYLAND
Jamie Raskin (D-MD)

MASSACHUSETTS
Michael Capuano (D-MA)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)

MICHIGAN
Justin Amash (R-MI)
John Conyers (D-MI)

MINNESOTA
Jason Lewis (R-MN)

NEW JERSEY
Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)

NEW YORK
Joseph Crowley (D-NY)
Brian Higgins (D-NY)
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)