Massachusetts representative Senator Elizabeth Warren said that she is confident Democrats will vote on a bill that supports the production and regulation of cannabis without any federal intervention.
According to her, this will materialize if ever they pass the bill in the Senate in November.
Senator Warren, who has also been eyed as one of the 2020 presidential candidates, feels confident that if the Democrats can entice the Senate about this, the assemblage will vote in its favor.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Senator Warren said that the bill is supported by two parties and she believes that they have enough votes to pass.
According to Senator Warren, she has been trying to convince the Republicans, through Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, to lie low on their stances against the passing of the bill on the federal level.
It was along with Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado that Senator Warren formulated the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act. The STATES Act has been kept untouched in the House despite it being supported by ten senators from both parties and as much as 28 members of the House of Representatives.
According to Warren, a lot of her colleagues on the Democratic side will have her support on this and based on past news, President Donald Trump is also for the legalization of the plant.
In the interview, Warren said, “He said it, I think, three different times now. So I’m pretty hopeful that if we could get a vote in Congress that we could actually get it passed.”
She said that she and the co-author have to make a lot of efforts in slowly inviting people in support of the bill. “We’ve been bringing people on to our bill two by two, a little like Noah’s Ark,” Warren said.
For her, this is a once in a lifetime event since a Democrat and a Republican are now working hand in hand in co-sponsoring the said bill in the Senate.
She also noted that a lot of members of the House of Representatives are on their side. Recently, there were reports that the team of the Senate Majority Leader McConnell is pressuring him to support their activities.
Through the bill, the Controlled Substances Act will be amended and a part of it will no longer be applied, specifically the part related to the manufacture, production, possession, distribution, dispensation, administration, or delivery of cannabis plants and byproducts.
However, contradictory to what Trump has been saying on national TV with regards to his support in the legalization of the drug, members of the White House, with the leadership of Attorney General Jeff Sessions have been on a mission of creating an opposing committee for the legalization of cannabis in support of the Justice Department.
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This committee was created entirely for the collection and compilation of negative and cherry-picked data about cannabis in order to decrease its support among the public.
As an opposition committee, it aims to delay the legislation of cannabis by using the collected data to fabricate stories that spread fear and misconception among people. This newly established institution has partnered with 15 more federal institutions in collecting such negative information.
This committee called the “Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee” have already sent electronic mails to the institutions mentioned. They asked for information that could turn off down support for cannabis legalization.
But for Warren, the opposition led by Attorney General Sessions has mobilized the Congress in favor of cannabis instead of the other way around. Senator Warren explained further as to why she was able to make such a conclusion:
“Let me describe it this way: We are in a moment when Jeff Sessions highlighted aggressive law enforcement on marijuana and a lot of folks here in Congress looked at each other and said, ‘That is a bad idea.’”
For Warren, it was because of her and her co-author Cory Gardner that the people were given an avenue where they can make a real change especially when it comes to public policies.
She admitted that they were only waiting for the response, and hopefully for the support of Mitch McConnell.
Though there is still an ongoing federal war when it comes to the legalization of cannabis and it is still illegal on the federal level, both medical and recreational cannabis have been embraced and legalized in some states.
Medical cannabis is now legal in 29 states and the adult use of the substance has been accepted as legal in nine states including Washington, D.C.
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