Garrett Introduces A bill To Eliminate Marijuana From Controlled Substance List

By

 Duncan TrigoboffSource: mmjreporter.com

The 5^th District Congressman Tom Garrett announced recently the launch of legislation that would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level. The bill is titled: Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017. The act, if passed will take the cannabis off the federally controlled substance list thus joining other substances such as alcohol and tobacco.

The introduction of the bill on marijuana was initially introduced by Senator Bernie Sandez in 2015 but it has since taken a long process for the bill to be passed at the federal level. According to Garrett, the states that have legalized weed Colorado, California, Virginia are handling the marijuana policies very well and there is no need to continue keeping laws on the books that are not enforced.

The bill will allow the states to determine the appropriate medicinal use and industrial hemp growth, which will boost the overall economy of the Virginia and the entire United States. In August, Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, launched a similar bill to remove marijuana from the country’s list of controlled substances. Booker argued that the failed war on drugs has significantly locked up many people of nonviolent drug offenders especially those related to marijuana and it’s high time they get access to high-quality marijuana products.

According to Booker, the legislation is the right thing to do for the safety of the public and it will help in reducing the overflowing prison population. The proposed bill will radically remove cannabis from the federal list of Schedule I substances and cancel all the federal convictions for use and possession of marijuana, which will effectively give a chance to million inmates an early release if it’s successfully passed.

Bookers’ bill will also allocate the federal funding to all the states that would loosen their own marijuana laws and revise the existing policies in place to deal diligently with marijuana users. Booker emphasized that the country’s drug laws are badly broken and need to be fixed immediately to curb the uncontrollable crime activities in the entire country.