“Mr. chairman, simply briefly earlier than I reply the congresswoman’s query—phrases matter—and whereas I’m on file, I simply want to say to you immediately, and your committee members, that placing hashish and slavery in the identical class is patently offensive and flagrant. So, I needed to state that.” – Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin
The U.S. Home’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee on Nov. 15 hosted a uncommon alternative within the political and hashish reform realms: a bipartisan congressional listening to calling for an finish to federal prohibition.
With subcommittee Chair Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rating Member Nancy Mace, R-S.C., working throughout the aisle for a standard trigger—to reverse course from a plant’s itemizing on the Managed Substances Act for greater than half a century—the legislative physique welcomed seven professional witnesses to assist make clear the results of criminalization, incarceration and discrimination, amongst different penalties of the federal authorities’s refusal to acknowledge the medicinal values and leisure functions of hashish.
“Descheduling is important in an effort to shut the rising and untenable divide between state and federal hashish legal guidelines,” stated Paul Armentano, govt director at NORML, one of many witnesses who has labored professionally on hashish coverage reform for practically 30 years.
RELATED: Witnesses Stress Want For Hashish Descheduling, Uniform Regulation at US Home Listening to on Federal Reform
Varied subcommittee members used their time to ask the witnesses about myriad points in state-legal markets, equivalent to limitations to entry, why fairness provisions are necessary, why banks are reluctant to tackle hashish purchasers, how veterans at the moment get their hashish, packaging and advertising and marketing requirements, and so forth, and the way conflicting federal legislation has fallen behind.
Different legislators used their time to make private statements with out exchanging ideas with the seven witnesses.
Rep. Pete Classes, R-Texas, made a generalized assertion about all medication to help his opposition to hashish reform.
“We discuss this difficulty as being bipartisan, however I believe we additionally want to incorporate all the details of the case,” he stated. “When you have a look at CDC—provisional information from CDC signifies that there have been an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the USA in the course of the 12-month interval that led to April 2021—a 28.5% improve from the 78,056 deaths throughout the identical interval the 12 months earlier than.”
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention statistics Classes was referring to will be seen right here. Nowhere within the report had been the phrases “hashish” or “marijuana” or “THC” talked about.
Later within the questioning section of the listening to, Mace requested Eric Goepel, founder and CEO of the Veterans Hashish Coalition, what number of overdose deaths have been attributed to hashish use. In his opening testimony, Goepel included particulars of veteran deaths by suicide, overdose and poisonous publicity.
“So, I don’t imagine the CDC, DEA, NIDA [National Institute on Drug Abuse] or every other federal company has ever immediately related a deadly overdose with hashish,” Goepel stated.
“So, meaning zero, proper?” Mace requested.
“Zero, sure, in line with the federal authorities,” Goepel stated.
Later within the listening to, Raskin—whose house state of Maryland simply voted to legalize adult-use hashish—in contrast the hashish prohibitionists of at this time to the alcohol prohibitionists of early Thirties (earlier than the twenty first Modification repealed Prohibition), saying that those that oppose hashish reform are pushing the identical forms of propaganda and hysteria from 90 years in the past.
In opposition, a part of Classes’ message in the course of the listening to was that “marijuana and medicines are crippling,” inflicting dependancy, crime and psychological points, he stated. The consultant from Texas went on to aim to attract a parallel between the hashish trade and slavery.
“The product is being marketed, the product is being bought, the product is being advocated by people who find themselves in it to earn cash,” Classes stated. “Slavery made cash additionally and was a horrible circumstance that this nation and the world went by way of for a lot of, a few years.”
Classes’ remarks come at a time when African Individuals comprise practically one-third of these arrested for hashish possession offenses in his house state of Texas, regardless of Black individuals comprising solely 13% of the state’s whole inhabitants, in line with an evaluation of state arrests information compiled by Texas NORML.
Nationwide, arrest information from 2001 to 2018 revealed a constant pattern: racial bias. Throughout that point interval “Blacks [were] 3.73 occasions extra probably than whites to be arrested for marijuana,” regardless of roughly equal utilization charges, in line with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Later within the listening to, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., requested Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin in regards to the distinction between pardons and expungements. In Alabama, Woodfin has utilized a 1975 legislation to determine the Pardons for Progress program, pardoning greater than 15,000 metropolis residents for hashish possession offenses, in line with a joint memorandum on hashish issued by the subcommittee the day earlier than the listening to.
Earlier than answering the query, Woodfin took a second to deal with Classes’ remark from roughly 20 minutes earlier within the listening to.
“Simply briefly earlier than I reply the congresswoman’s query—phrases matter—and whereas I’m on file, I simply want to say to you immediately, and your committee members, that placing hashish and slavery in the identical class is patently offensive and flagrant,” he stated. “So, I needed to state that.”
Evaluating the authorized hashish trade to slavery is patently offensive.
I hope that Rep. @PeteSessions learns from his many Republican colleagues on the appropriate facet of this difficulty.
It’s previous time we finish the prohibition of hashish. pic.twitter.com/psySB0Ilsc
— Randall Woodfin (@randallwoodfin) November 15, 2022
Woodfin went on to clarify how pardons are on the govt degree, permitting presidents, governors and mayors to put aside penalties or launch these from incarceration.
“However the expungement is extraordinarily necessary as a result of that’s extra on the judicial degree,” he stated. “And even should you pardon me, if I apply for a job, for example, [the charge] might nonetheless be on my file, however extra importantly the arrest. So, the expungement by way of the judicial course of permits an individual’s whole file to be hid; that’s not solely the precise cost however that additionally consists of the arrest.”
