Janine Jackson interviewed the Enact Group’s Mike Liszewski about marijuana justice for the April 8, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: The image of marijuana a visitor might get from US media and popular culture is that the stigma is gone. Tons of people admit to using or having used it, and it’s practically legal, right?
It’s true, access to medical marijuana is now legal in most states, and 18 states plus DC and Guam now allow access for adult use. But according to Drug Policy Alliance, marijuana laws are still responsible for some half a million arrests a year—with, no points for guessing, Black and brown people disproportionately impacted.
Indeed, Black people are almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite equal rates of consumption. And it’s a leading cause of—or excuse for—deportation.
Marijuana prohibition continues to ruin lives and livelihoods, which is why if the MORE Act that recently passed in the House had only descheduled marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, it would be a lot less meaningful.
We’re joined now by a leading expert on marijuana laws in the US. Mike Liszewski is founder and principal at the Enact Group. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Mike Liszewski.
Mike Liszewski: Hi, Janine, thanks for having me.
Mike Liszewski: “Marijuana isn’t just about legalization…but making sure that the communities that have been harmed the most…are really at the center.”
JJ: It’s being short-handed everywhere as “decriminalizing pot,” but the legislation is called the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act for a reason. Could you give listeners a sense of the overall intentions or aims of this bill? They’re integrated, aren’t they?
ML: Yes. It’s a real comprehensive approach to marijuana reform. It’s built on some bills that were introduced by some of our long-time champions, like Earl Blumenauer and Barbara Lee, who have really tried to make sure that the issue of marijuana isn’t just about legalization and the industry, but making sure that the communities that have been harmed the most by the racially disproportionate impact and enforcement of our marijuana laws are really at the center of our marijuana policy moving forward.
So the MORE Act, in addition to ending federal criminalization, would set up a robust system for expungement. There would be automatic expungements for certain marijuana offenses at the federal level, and there would also be funding to help effectuate expungements at the state level. A lot of states have begun to do their own expungement efforts, but a lot of times where they run into trouble is there’s not enough funding to make sure that they actually take place.
The MORE Act would help out for both federal and state expungements, and then also it would impose a modest tax on the industry. It would start off at 5% at the wholesaler level, and it would gradually work up to about 8%, and that tax revenue would go, in part, to the expungements, but also to help repair the communities that have been most disproportionately impacted by our enforcement of marijuana laws.
It would fund job training, community services, public health, substance abuse prevention. All sorts of things that communities that have been most harmed by our drug war enforcement, where they could use some help.
So it’s a real comprehensive approach to ending federal marijuana prohibition, and taking accountability for the harms that 50 years of marijuana prohibition—and actually more; it’s 50 years since the Controlled Substances Act went into effect, but our marijuana policy has been largely one of prohibition going back to the early 20th century.
Extra! (2/13)
JJ: As we’ve said, many states have passed their own laws. You just started, I think, to touch on it. But why is the federal aspect important here? What’s different in having this change happen at that level?
ML: It is key that the states are leading on marijuana reform, because most of the arrests do happen at the state level. But a lot of the reasons why we hear in states that haven’t legalized yet is that it’s still illegal federally, and that as long as it’s still illegal federally, the powers that be in those states are reluctant to move forward. And that’s why a lot of the marijuana reforms that you’ve seen so far, they’ve been in states that have ballot measures.
There’s only been a handful of states—like Illinois and New York, Connecticut—that have actually done it through their legislatures. Virginia is another. And those have all been in recent years. So we’re optimistic about the trend moving forward. But many of those states only legalized through their legislature after we passed the MORE Act the first time in the House, and that was in the lame duck session in 2020. So we weren’t really able to do much after it passed, but we think that, for lack of a better word, the symbolism of the federal government beginning, Congress beginning to show that it’s going to be changing its marijuana policy at some point has inspired these states to be bolder.
So once the federal government legalizes, we would anticipate that many, many more states would follow through with that.
JJ: This kind of follows on from that, because there is a Senate companion bill that I think originally was introduced by Kamala Harris, right, when she was a senator, and had some support from high-profile folks—Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker. But the word is right now, no way is this getting through the Senate. And I just wanted to ask, having done this work for some time, why do groups take on efforts where the preliminary math says you won’t get through? What are the other gains?
ML: The first thing I’ll say to that is, when we worked on the MORE Act in the House side back in 2019 and 2020, we were told, one, it would never come up for a vote; two, if it did, we would lose. We got it on the floor, and we ended up winning. So there’s the whole “never say never” aspect to this.
We also recognize the realities of the Senate, and that hardly anything is getting passed. But just because there’s an uphill challenge there politically, we do have Leader Schumer, who’s working on his own comprehensive bill with senators Booker and Wyden, and we expect that to be introduced sometime in the coming weeks. We do have the majority leader backing our comprehensive bill. And so I think we’re going to see a lot more progress in the Senate.
One thing that this issue has experienced is the House is very well-versed on this issue by now. Many House members have made several votes on marijuana issues. We’ve either been to their offices, or other organizations working on this issue have been to their offices. Just about everyone in the House is well-versed on this.
The Senate really hasn’t had to consider it. And so the introduction of Senator Schumer’s comprehensive bill, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, when that comes out in a couple of weeks, that’s really going to force the Senate to consider this issue like it never had before.
So while we may not see a payoff in 2022 in terms of passing a bill, it’s a necessary step for us to get there eventually. So we think we’re going to see significant progress in the Senate. We may start to see hearings on marijuana and various Senate committees. So I think, while we may not get to where we want to end up in 2022, we’re going to take several significant steps towards getting to that ultimate goal.
JJ: Finally, does it matter that Biden seems to be opposed, in deed, if not in word?
ML: Certainly we’re frustrated with the Biden administration on marijuana so far. There was word that there was going to be clemency for marijuana prisoners. Drug Policy Alliance would like to see everyone with drug offenses to be able to receive clemency.
But the fact that the Biden administration didn’t follow through, even on just marijuana prisoners like they said they would, that’s been disappointing. We’ve seen some other disappointing things from the White House in terms of security clearances.
So we know that this isn’t the most friendly administration on this issue, but we do think that if we have a bill that’s supported by a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and if it was delivered to the president, we have confidence that we could get it into law. So there were candidates who were better on this issue, but we do think that we can win Biden over.
JJ: And supported by the majority of the people in the country, not for nothing.
ML: Indeed, indeed.
JJ: Yep. We’ve been speaking with Mike Liszewski of the Enact Group. Thank you so much, Mike Liszewski, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
ML: Thanks for having me.
The post ‘Once the Federal Government Legalizes, Many More States Would Follow Through’ appeared first on FAIR.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.
Janine Jackson | Radio Free (2022-04-15T18:13:57+00:00) ‘Once the Federal Government Legalizes, Many More States Would Follow Through’. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/15/once-the-federal-government-legalizes-many-more-states-would-follow-through/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.