“The federal government should use its power to help terminally ill citizens, not arrest them!”
Washington, DC: Fifteen Republicans joined a record 136 Democrats (and one Independent) on Wednesday to vote in favor of a bi-partisan amendment to the House Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary Appropriations bill that sought to bar the Justice Department from prosecuting patients who use medical marijuana in compliance with state laws. Although the amendment was eventually defeated by a 273 to 152 vote, the number of Congressmen on record in support of the physician-supervised use of medicinal marijuana was the largest ever recorded in Congress.
“This vote represents real progress in our efforts to amend federal law to permit the medicinal use of marijuana,” NORML Executive Director Keith Stroup said, noting that fewer than 100 members of Congress supported the use of medical pot when the issue was last voted on in 1998. “Most promising is that more than two-thirds of House Democrats supported this amendment. Our next priority is to get these same members to sign on as co-sponsors of House Bill 2233, the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act, and mandate Congress to schedule legislative hearings on this vital legislation.”
The proposed amendment – introduced by Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) – would have prevented federal law enforcement from “arresting, prosecuting, suing, or otherwise discouraging doctors, patients, and distributors … from following their state laws with regard to medical marijuana.”
Since 2001, the Bush administration has ordered more than 40 federal raids of medicinal marijuana patients and providers in California, despite a state law permitting the use and cultivation of pot by qualified patients. (Similar laws eliminating criminal penalties on the use of medicinal marijuana have been enacted in eight other states.) The administration is also asking the Supreme Court to overturn a unanimous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding the rights of physicians to discuss the medical use of marijuana with their patients.
Representatives Hinchey and Rohrabacher – along with Reps. Sam Farr (D-CA), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Ron Paul (R-TX) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) – spoke in favor of the amendment, noting that the provision supported “states’ rights” and “reaffirm[ed] the power of citizen democracy and state and local government.”
“This is about compassion,” said Dennis Kucinich, one of nine Democrat candidates for President. “The federal government should use its power to help terminally ill citizens, not arrest them. And states deserve to have the right to make their own decisions regarding the use of medical marijuana.”
Representative Rohrabacher argued that the federal government’s interference with states’ medical marijuana policies “is totally contrary to our way of life. It is a travesty for the federal government to send police into my state (California) and arrest people and throw them in a cage, in jail, for doing something that the vast majority of people … voted to make a legal practice.”
Rohrabacher said that his mother could have likely benefited from the medical use of marijuana as an appetite stimulant shortly before her death, and that he “could not look at [himself] in the face” if he backed the administration’s position outlawing the drug’s use.
Representatives Michael Burgess (R-TX), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Mark Souder (R-IN) and Frank Wolf (R-VA) spoke out against the amendment, maintaining that “state medical marijuana laws are a sham,” and that the use of marijuana as a medicine “has taken the culture in the wrong direction.”
For more information, please contact Keith Stroup of NORML at (202) 483-5500. A transcript of the House debate is available online at:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/HincheyAmendmentTrans2003.pdf
A breakdown of the House vote is available from NORML’s website at:
http://capwiz.com/norml2/home/