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Senator Booker Says Federal Legalization Rests on Georgia Runoffs
Speaking with Vice News, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker weighed in on the importance of next month’s runoff elections in Georgia for two US Senate seats.
Senator Booker is referring to bills, including the MORE Act, that would end federal marijuana prohibition. While the Democratic House has moved forward on these bills, they languish and die in the Republican-held Senate. Democratic wins in the Georgia races would tilt control of Congress to the Democrats.
Senator Booker notes that he has never used marijuana but calls on people who do to remain vigilant about fixing the harms of the Drug War, post-legalization.
Georgia Rep Files Bill to Pressure States to Expunge Marijuana Convictions
That’s Georgia Congressman Kwanza Hall, describing a bill he’s introducing that puts the pressure on state and local officials to expunge criminal records of marijuana offenders.
Hall’s bill is a significant addition to the fight to end marijuana prohibition nationally, reports Marijuana Moment. Other bills, like the MORE Act, have focused on the expungement of federal criminal records. Most charges for marijuana possession, sales, and cultivation happen at the state and local level.
Hall was appointed to fill the seat of the late civil rights icon, Congressman John Lewis.
Prosecutor in Oregon’s Largest County Drops Drug Possession Cases
Citing the measure passed by voters last month to decriminalize all drug possession, the prosecutor in Multnomah County, Oregon, has dropped all pending drug possession charges, despite the measure’s February effective date.
Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt wrote in a press release that “strong public support” for Measure 110, which passed by nearly 17 percentage points statewide and by over 48 points in the county, shows that “It’s time to move beyond these failed practices, expand access to treatment and focus our limited law enforcement resources to target high-level, commercial drug offenses.”
Multnomah County is Oregon’s most populous, home to the city of Portland. The prosecutor in neighboring Clackamas County previously agreed to drop such cases, as has the prosecutor in Deschutes County, home to Bend, Oregon.
Missouri State Rep. Not Sold on Legislative Legalization
Missouri State Rep. Peter Merideth discussed the potential for recreational marijuana legalization in the Show-Me State with St. Louis Public Radio.
Medical marijuana is legal in Missouri, thanks to a 2018 constitutional amendment initiative passed by two-thirds of the voters. Meridith seems to believe that’s what it will take for recreational marijuana.
Meridith points out that it has been the legislature’s implementation of the voter’s wishes that has proved problematic.
UK Researchers Warn of Tobacco-Laced Marijuana Smoking
Three out of four marijuana smokers in the United Kingdom add tobacco to their marijuana joints for smoking, a practice researchers warn is harmful to health.
A new study published in the journal Addiction finds that those tokers are mixing about one-third of a gram of tobacco in a typical joint. It also points to research that finds mixing cannabis and tobacco produces more negative acute cardiovascular effects and is associated with chronic bronchitis.
Hannah Walsh of King’s College London, one of the study’s authors, writes, “It’s also a concern that people may be unwittingly establishing a tobacco addiction, with cannabis acting as their route into a lifetime of smoking tobacco.”
