As state legislators, they helped create a medical marijuana program that violates federal regulation. Now in Congress, they should repair it.
U.S. Reps. Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Randy Feenstra are Republicans representing Iowa within the U.S. Home within the 117th Congress.
For the primary time this century, Republicans in Congress are sponsoring a invoice to legalize marijuana on the federal degree. As ordinary, Iowa’s GOP delegation is sluggish on the uptake.
The States Reform Act was launched this week by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and some different Home Republicans. The invoice would carry nonsensical federal restrictions towards hashish, enable for modest taxation and regulation, and clear the best way for interstate gross sales.
By failing to behave, federal Republicans are in impact selling lawlessness and excessive taxes.
Virtually each state, together with Iowa, allows some legal access to marijuana however members of Congress have created a giant mess for the states by means of their inaction.
No Iowans in Congress are among the many preliminary sponsors of the Republican marijuana invoice. That’s disappointing since they need to know higher than most that the established order is untenable. Policymakers in Iowa have spent the previous few years wringing their hands over the authorized standing of the state’s medical marijuana program.
Of their earlier jobs as state legislators, Iowa’s three Home Republicans voted to advance medical marijuana insurance policies that clearly violate federal regulation.
U.S. Reps. Ashley Hinson and Randy Feenstra each backed a 2017 law in Iowa permitting licensed companies to fabricate and promote medical hashish merchandise. U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks wasn’t within the Legislature then however she too has supported Iowa’s unlawful medical program.
Hinson, Miller-Meeks and Feenstra are on the file explicitly acknowledging the strain they’ve created between state and federal regulation. All of them voted for a bill in the Iowa Legislature last year directing state bureaucrats to request ensures that Iowa’s federal funding wouldn’t be jeopardized over the state working an unlawful medical hashish program.
In response to federal regulation, marijuana is classed as a Schedule I substance, that means it has a excessive potential for abuse and no medicinal worth. Eradicating that incorrect designation, because the States Reform Act would do, is a needed step towards rational marijuana coverage.
The invoice wouldn’t power states to legalize marijuana however it could make issues a lot simpler for states like Iowa which might be already overseeing marijuana gross sales.
“Each state is totally different. Hashish reform on the federal degree should take all of this into consideration. And it’s previous time federal regulation codifies this actuality,” Mace, a first-term consultant, mentioned in a information launch.
Below federal prohibition, each medical and leisure marijuana businesses are subject to pointless compliance necessities and important tax penalties. That inevitably leads to larger costs for customers or in dispensaries going out of enterprise — or each, as now we have seen in Iowa.
Iowa Republicans have supported payments in Congress to cautiously develop medical marijuana and to offer marijuana companies entry to banking companies. Miller-Meeks this yr joined Mace in introducing a invoice to bolster medical cannabis research for veterans.
Nevertheless, none of them has but endorsed laws to take away marijuana from Schedule I, the important thing piece to any actual reform agenda. Half measures are higher than nothing however they received’t get us the place we have to be.
Marijuana legalization is inevitable. The federal authorities just isn’t going to return to doing main raids on respectable weed companies in authorized states. By failing to behave, federal Republicans are in impact selling lawlessness and excessive taxes.
(319) 339-3156; [email protected]
