UPDATE: April 1, 2022: By a vote of 220-204, the US House of Representatives has passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. The Act will now move to the Senate for committee assignment and where the fate of the MORE Act remains in question given Senator Majority Leader Schumer's (D-NY) stated preference for the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.
UPDATE: March 30, 2022: The US House of Representatives Rules Committee has scheduled the MORE Act for committee meeting at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. The Rules Committee considers all bills reported from policy and fiscal committees and determines whether, and in what order, to schedule their consideration on the floor of the House. The Rules Committee also reviews, adopts and schedules consideration of floor resolutions. The meeting of the Rules Committee today may suggest that House leadership is ready to move the bill to a floor vote.
March 28, 2022: The Marijuana Opportunity & Reinvestment Act (MORE Act) has been added to the list of bills to be considered for vote this week by the United States House of Representatives. The MORE Act, which previously passed the US House in 2020, but was rejected by the Senate, was reintroduced by introduced by Congressman Nadler (D-NY) in May 2021 and would:
Remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act
Facilitate the expungement of past convictions.
Tax cannabis products at 5% to fund criminal and social reform projects, including an Office of Cannabis Justice within the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, responsible for administering grants to aid communities negatively affected by the war on drugs.
Establish a trust fund to support various programs and services for individuals and businesses in communities impacted by the war on drugs.
Prohibit the denial of any federal public benefits, like housing, on the basis of cannabis use and states that use or possession of marijuana would have no adverse impact under immigration laws.
Potential passage of the MORE Act by the House sets up a showdown with Democratic leaders in the Senate and, specifically, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has indicated that he prefers a robust Senate drafted measure known as the Cannabis Administration & Opportunity Act (CAOA). Both measures would remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances, establish social equity programs, and facilitate expungement of prior federal criminal cannabis convictions, with differences largely amounting tax rates and the mechanisms for funding and administering various social equity programs.
Read our previous post about these and other cannabis proposals currently pending on Capital Hill.
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