This is the first day in a long number when we’re not blogging another report about opposition groups making new moves (legal or otherwise) to advance their “defeat ‘this thing’ by any means necessary before the election” strategy.
“This thing” is what Walter Plumb of Drug Safe Utah (DSU) dismissively called the Utah Medical Cannabis Initiative after the day, or rather the night of May 14th when he and Michelle McOmber of UMA and DSU were desperately trying to get signatures they’d ginned up after the official deadline for rescission to be accepted had expired at the very closed Davis County Clerk’s office in the dead of night – including sending some to the Clerk’s house and handing them to his wife.
Plumb’s remark was along the lines of “if we’d had another day we would have been done with ‘this thing’ ” or words much to that effect.
Ahhh, the good old days. The milk of compassion for patients obviously runs thin on the opposition side.
Anyway, as the certification process wheels turn in the Lt. Gov’s office and the whole array of opposition groups refuels, we’re turning momentarily to some federal news – but news which relates directly to UMCI opponent arguments, as a main opponent talking point is that “marijuana” remains federally illegal.
Technically this is true – for now – but the situation is far from static, AG Jeff Sessions notwithstanding. Scores of bills reforming cannabis laws are in the House and Senate hoppers with more sponsors – D and R – than ever before.
And Congress has passed an annual amendment “banning the Department of Justice from using its funds to intervene with state laws that allow the growth, distribution, and use of cannabis for medical use” every year since 2014, so the feds have been HONORING STATE LAWS, meaning that the US Gov’t DOES accept state medical cannabis laws.
And this year… “…after legalization opponents—have worked to keep the amendment from making it to a floor vote,
‘For the first time ever our Rohrabacher-Blumenauer language passed by voice in Committee,’ Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) tweeted.
Don Murphy, director of conservative outreach for the Marijuana Policy Project, called the amendment just the latest sign that support is growing in Congress for marijuana policy reforms.
“Republicans are joining with Democrats to protect compassionate state medical marijuana programs from federal interference,” he said.”
Bottom line, there IS federal cover for state programs and more feels inevitable….
See full article – Rohrabacher–Blumenauer Renewal OK’d by Congressional Committee | Leafly
