HR 2306: Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011

It's call and email time

Jun 22, 2011 -

HR 2306: Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011

Statement from NORML director Allen St. Pierre:

As a marijuana consumer for over 25 years I’ve never seen my responsible use of marijuana (or that of my friends and family) as a crime. Therefore, I’ve come to strongly believe that adults who responsibly consume marijuana should not be treated like criminals. It is time to end Marijuana Prohibition once and for all.
 
NORML’s national membership and large supporter network, cobbled together after 40 years of public advocacy for marijuana law reform, as well as tens of millions of Americans who consume marijuana annually, agree: Marijuana smoking is relatively harmless and it is not an act of moral turpitude and should no longer be a crime.
 
Just as with Alcohol Prohibition in an earlier era, numerous states today have largely abandoned the federal government’s expensive and overly restrictive Cannabis Prohibition laws: today, fourteen states have formally decriminalized marijuana possession and sixteen states now have legal protections for physician-sanctioned medical marijuana patients.
 
We need to recognize as a nation that the arrest of over 22 million otherwise law-abiding, taxpaying marijuana consumers since the 1960s—over 850,000 arrests per annum; equating to a marijuana-related arrest every 35 seconds; 90% for possession only—has failed to achieve the government’s stated principle goal of ‘reducing the use of marijuana in American society’.
 
Instead, state and federal governments and their elected policy makers should recognize the societal benefits of legally controlling and taxing adult marijuana commerce in a manner similar to alcohol products, where, government and industry education programs established to educate and deter the misuse and abuse of alcohol and reducing the percentage of Americans who choose to smoke tobacco products, have been remarkably successful in the last four decades—reducing the instances of drunk driving and reducing the number of Americans who smoke tobacco by a whopping fifty percent without making responsible use of either drug illegal.

If the government’s stated goal is to reduce the number of Americans who smoke marijuana only a lawful system for marijuana distribution, along with verifiable and credible public health information—not the criminal justice system—can actually achieve the stated goal at reducing marijuana use in America.
 
The introduction of today’s historic federal marijuana legalization bill seeks to accomplish what the country did at the end of Alcohol Prohibition—remove federal penalties and allow states to regulate and control marijuana products for responsible adult use.
 
Again, it is time we stopped arresting the millions of responsible marijuana consumers in America, and the passage of this law would allow us to move forward with this process in earnest.