July 21, 2020 John,
I’ll get right to the point: I reached out to your congressional office earlier this week but I haven’t yet received a response. That is why I need you to also contact your Representative's office and urge them to vote ‘yes’ on the Blumenauer-McClintock-Norton amendment.
Since 2014, members of Congress have passed annual spending bills that have included a provision protecting those who engage in the state-sanctioned use and dispensing of medical cannabis from federal prosecution by the Department of Justice. The amendment maintains that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states from “implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
It is time for Congress to expand these important protections to adult-use legalization states. Today, nearly one in four Americans reside in a jurisdiction where the adult use of cannabis is legal under state statute.
The Blumenauer-McClintock-Norton amendment removes the word "medical" from the existing language -- thereby extending these protections to both qualified patients and to adults, as well as to those licensed in both the medical and recreational industries.
Will you join me in sending a message right now?
Last year, House lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a similar amendment by a bipartisan vote of 267 to 165. Unfortunately, Senate leadership ultimately removed the language from the final version of the bill.
But, as the old saying goes: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! For context, the medical protections amendment failed half a dozen times before we succeeded in getting it into law.
While it is NORML’s ultimate goal to persuade Congress to deschedule cannabis altogether, we also believe in the importance of these stop-gap actions to protect those tens of millions of marijuana consumers from undue federal interference. Passage of the Blumenauer-McClintock-Norton amendment.will provide immediate and crucial relief to these millions of Americans. Urge your lawmakers to advance this measure now.
Thanks for staying in this fight,
Justin
Justin Strekal
NORML Political Director
P.S. If you’re in a position to do so, we’d really appreciate your support signing up to be a sustaining NORML member by chipping in 5, 10, 20 bucks or more a month so we can sustainably grow our efforts.
