As soon as next week, there will be a crucial vote in the US House of Representatives on an amendment to protect legal marijuana states from federal interference.
Researchers concluded, “We see no evidence that liberalized cannabis policies are directly associated with increased smoking behaviors among young adults.”
Investigators reported, “[D]espite significant increases in levels of cannabis use in our sample, change in cannabis use did not predict changes in motivation, which suggests that cannabis use may not lead to reductions in motivation over time.”
On Sunday, the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD told CNN that “When it comes to decriminalization, I don’t think that there is value to individuals or to society to lock people up for marijuana use. I don’t think that serves anybody well.”
The second lottery is reserved for equity applicants who have or whose family members have, a past marijuana conviction, or who have lived in a “disproportionately impacted area” for at least 10 years.
United States Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), along with Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) unveiled draft legislation repealing the federal prohibition of marijuana at a press conference on Wednesday.
This long-awaited proposal is comprehensive and includes many of the criminal justice reforms provided in the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act, which passed the House of Representatives last December, and provides ample deference to the laws already in place in the majority of states that have already legalized marijuana for either medical or adult use.
These are the first of up to 360,000 cases and convictions that are eligible for vacation, dismissal and automatic expungement.