Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed long-awaited legislation last month (July) that would legalize marijuana on the federal level. During a press conference at the Capitol, Schumer, D-NY, alongside Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J. stated, “this is monumental. At long last, we are taking the steps in the Senate to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs.” The bill is reminiscent of the MORE Act, which was reintroduced in May this year after passing through the House of Representatives but losing support in the Senate in 2020.

The new legislation officially titled the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act not only aims to federally legalize marijuana but also to repair the damages that a failed “War on Drugs” created, especially and disproportionately in communities of color and low-income communities.

It would remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances, expunge federal cannabis records of nonviolent offenders, allow for federally imprisoned people to petition for a resentencing and introduce a federal tax on cannabis products. If passed, the bill also includes means to reinvest taxation revenue back into the individuals and communities that have been the most adversely affected by cannabis prohibition.

Before there is any mention of legalization, the new bill opens with a profound emphasis on equity moving forward. “The War on Drugs has been a war on people – particularly people of color. The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act aims to end the decades of harm inflicted on communities of color.” It goes on to say, “the communities that have been most harmed by cannabis prohibition are benefitting the least from the legal marijuana marketplace,” and that “a legacy of racial and ethnic injustices, compounded by disproportionate collateral consequences of 80 years of cannabis prohibition enforcement, now limits participation in the industry.”

The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act puts racial equality at the forefront of its reparations and in this one pivotal way, it differs from the several previous attempts to federally legalize marijuana. Monumental to say the least.

The legislation outlines the creation of a community reinvestment grant program called the Opportunity Trust Fund – a measure that would utilize cannabis tax revenue by reinvesting it into the communities that need it the most. The draft states that this fund would help “level the playing field for entrepreneurs of color who continue to face barriers of access to the industry.”

The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would also implement reinvestment by providing grants for nonprofit organizations involved in expungement legal aid, reentry services, job training, literacy programs, youth recreation and mentoring, and other health education programs. In addition, the federal Small Business Administration would be directed to establish a Cannabis Opportunity Program that would provide federally supported Section 7(m) small business loans to cannabis companies owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.

In addition to the removal of marijuana from the federal schedule of controlled substances and the reinvestment measures, the new legislation also importantly ends discrimination in federal public benefits for medical marijuana consumers. An application of this change would be for example, that a cannabis-prescribed veteran in a legal state can not be denied their federal benefits based solely on their consumption of cannabis.

The CAOA would transfer regulatory responsibility from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF), as well as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to protect public health.

Between federal legalization and reinvestment funds, the doors of cannabis research will swing wide open. Freedom from federal persecution will allow scientists to study and obtain the much-needed information pertaining to marijuana that has been hindered by prohibition for decades. This data will prove to be invaluable as it is applied to the world of cannabis regulation in the future.

At a press conference announcing the bill, co-sponsor Cory Booker, D-N.J. was very clear that he would actively block other partial efforts that do not include equity measures or offer any criminal justice relief. For example, any legislation resembling that of the SAFE Banking Act which attempted to allow financial institutions to aid cannabis companies in legal states without the repercussion of a federal penalty. The issue is that it would have only provided relief to businesses and not the half of a million Americans arrested for marijuana every year, however, the bill did not make it past either Chamber.

Though the bill isn’t perfect, drug policy reform advocates saluted the Senate Majority Leader for taking charge of the challenge and welcomed the bill with positivity. However, some advocates quickly expressed areas of concern such as the necessity that federal employees still be subject to cannabis drug testing. Additionally, that expungement should not automatically be given to all individuals with marijuana charges.

The Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, Maritza Perez, highlighted that the reform proposal contained “exclusionary language” in regard to expungement, similar to that witnessed in the MORE Act. Verbiage such as “non-violent” and “kingpin” when referring to the various degrees of marijuana offenses, Perez says, establishes arbitrary hierarchies of criminality that would deny expungement to individuals “who have already paid the highest price – the opportunity to expunge their records.”

Similar to the MORE Act, the new bill contains this “kingpin exclusion” and would deny expungement eligibility to anyone who received an enhanced marijuana sentence. Perez and others believe the criminal-legal system cannot be truly reformed until these exclusions are remediated.

With national support for marijuana legalization at approximately 68%, according to the most recent Gallup poll (Nov. 2020), it is promising to see a governing system begin to reflect the public. The push to not only legalize marijuana on the federal level but to also fix the broken pieces of a flawed judicial system paints a hopeful picture of the future.

In the report Seeds of Change: Strategies to create an equitable cannabis industry, Leafy reviews the cannabis industry diversity problem and how to address it. This guide and others are a great way for everyone to get on the same page moving forward.

As the legislation progresses, keep tuning in for the most recent updates on all things cannabis.