Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, unveiled a plan to end marijuana prohibition — and then promptly suffocate the marijuana market with a litany of federal taxes and regulations. There’s no doubt federal marijuana prohibition should be terminated, but Schumer’s convoluted proposal isn’t the way to do it.
The so-called Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would, on the one hand, federally deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and expunge federal nonviolent marijuana-related criminal records.
Those are sensible actions.
But, as Reason Magazine Jacob Sullum noted in a recent piece about Schumer’s plan, the bill goes off the rails from there.
“State-licensed marijuana businesses, which already are regulated by state and local governments, would also be supervised by the Food and Drug Administration, the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,” Sullum writes.
Coupled with this extensive web of regulation would be an extensive level of taxation, including a federal excise tax of up to 25%.
Schumer’s proposal is one that could only make sense to a career politician who doesn’t realize the disconnect between his own vision of how government policy works and how it actually interacts with the world.
As states including California have learned, there are plenty of people willing to engage with the legal marijuana market given the opportunity.
But there are also plenty willing to stay in the black market to avoid onerous regulations and excessive taxation.
If the goal is to end the failed and unjust policy of marijuana prohibition at the federal level, it’s not hard to actually do that.
As Sullum notes, Schumer’s bill comes in at 163 pages, twice as long as the previously introduced Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act and far longer than former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s one-sentence bill that proposed voiding federal marijuana laws in states that chose to legalize marijuana.
The goal should be to end federal marijuana prohibition, not to insert the heavy hand of the federal government into the marijuana market.
Federal meddling in the market for marijuana has been the problem in the first place.
After driving marijuana underground for decades, it’s time for the federal government to remove itself from the marijuana market, not to meddle in the way proposed by Schumer.
Congress should keep it as simple as possible. Remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, let states decide what to do and purge the records of people arrested for nonviolent federal marijuana offenses.
Written by the Southern California News Group editorial board.
