Congress Could Vote On These Marijuana Amendments Next Week (Unless GOP Blocks Them Again)

The U.S. House of Representatives could vote next week on amendments that would let marijuana businesses access banks and allow the city of Washington, D.C. to spend its own money on legalizing and regulating recreational cannabis sales.

That’s if Republican leaders don’t block their colleagues from even being able to consider the measures on the floor.

The House Rules Committee, led by ardent prohibitionist Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) has already stymied nearly three dozen cannabis amendments from advancing during the current Congress, as shown by a Marijuana Moment analysis earlier this week. Exactly zero marijuana-related measures have been cleared by GOP leaders for floor votes since the summer of 2016.

But that hasn’t stopped a growing bipartisan list of lawmakers who support cannabis law reform from continuing to try.

The two newly proposed amendments on banking and D.C. are being offered to a large-scale bill to fund parts of the federal government for Fiscal Year 2019. The legislation is expected to be considered by the Rules Committee next week before being sent to the floor.

The pending D.C. measure would allow the city to expand on its current voter-approved law that allows adults to legally use, possess and grow small amounts of marijuana. An ongoing federal appropriations rider has prevented officials from adding a system of taxed and regulated cannabis sales.

The amendment, filed by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), with the support of Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), would strip the marijuana regulation ban from the budget bill so the city could spend its own money enacting whatever cannabis laws it sees fit.

“I will expose any Member who interferes in D.C.’s local affairs so their constituents see them focusing on our business instead of theirs by trying to force a vote on the House floor on each and every anti-home-rule rider,” Norton said in a press release that also addressed other measures she filed to beat back congressional interference in the district’s lawmaking processes.

The second new cannabis amendment would prevent federal regulators from punishing a bank “solely because the institution provides financial services to an entity that is a manufacturer, producer, or a person that participates in any business or organized activity that involves handling marijuana or marijuana products and engages in such activity pursuant to a law established by a State or a unit of local government.”

Similar amendments to let cannabis businesses access banks were defeated in by House and Senate Appropriations committees last month.

A marijuana banking measure was approved on the House floor in 2014 by a margin of 231 to 192, but its language was not included in final enacted legislation that year.

The current amendment is sponsored by Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA), along with Rohrabacher, Blumenauer, Lee, and Norton. They are joined by Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), Jared Polis (D-CO), Dina Titus (D-NV), Don Young (R-AK), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Jason Lewis (R-MN), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Jared Huffman (D-CA), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI).

That is by far the most cosponsors of any of the 229 amendments filed on the pending FY2019 funding bill so far.

But huge bipartisan cosponsor lists haven’t prevented Pete Sessions and the Rules Committee from preventing floor votes on cannabis measures for the past several years. It remains to be seen if this time will be different.

By Tom Angell

Read more from the Source: MarijuanaMoment.com