NORMLIZER - NOVEMBER 2006

A bill to protect medical-marijuana patients falls short in now-annual vote.

Since 2002, New York Democrat Maurice Hinchey and California Republican Dana Rohrabacher have offered an amendment to a congressional spending bill that seeks to prohibit the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law-enforcement agencies from using taxpayer dollars to harass and arrest patients who are in compliance with their state’s medical-marijuana laws. Currently, 11 states have laws that offer legal protections for qualified patients: Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

Important as it is for advocates of marijuana-law reform to have their issue debated on the floor of the US Congress, the now-annual Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment serves mostly as a grand public demonstration of the huge chasms in Congress regarding marijuana policy. In case you forgot to watch C-Span this June, here’s a sample of what passes for reasoned debate. From Congressman John Peterson (R-PA):

“My friend’s son Johnnie began smoking marijuana in high school… Johnnie lost his thrust for life. Johnnie lost the keen mind that God had given him. Marijuana stole him from the potential he had. Folks, if I thought the American public needed legal marijuana for pain and suffering, I would support it. We have more drugs than we need on the marketplace… Marijuana is a dangerous drug that is not adequately respected by the young people of this country because they have been seduced by leaders in this country advocating that it is a perfect, wonderful drug.”

The Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment has become important to marijuana-law-reform groups such as NORML because Congress, under Republican leadership, hasn’t allowed a vote on the more important and far-reaching congressional bill HR 2087, the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act, which would allow states to reschedule marijuana and permit it to be used and legally distributed as medicine for qualified patients. And so, were it not for the bold efforts of Hinchey and Rohrabacher, there would be no vote on medical marijuana at all.

Meanwhile, for the fourth year in a row, Congress had an opportunity to stop wasting taxpayer dollars by prohibiting federal law-enforcement agencies from arresting and prosecuting seriously ill patients who possess and use medical cannabis in compliance with state law. Instead, the House voted 259-163 against the bipartisan amendment—which was still the highest total of favorable votes ever recorded in a congressional floor vote to liberalize marijuana laws, though far from the number needed for victory. Of those who voted in support of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical-marijuana amendment, 18 were Republicans (three more than in 2005) and 144 were Democrats.

Allen St. Pierre is the executive director of NORML, 888-67-NORML, norml.org. See how your congressional representative voted on medical marijuana at http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll333.xml