Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to legalize cannabis at the federal level. While the vote was mostly along party lines — approved 228 to 164 — five Republicans supported the reform (including Representative Tom McClintock of Placer County) and six Democrats opposed it. Under the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act, cannabis would become federally de-scheduled and those with prior convictions would have their records expunged. The bill would also authorize a 5 percent tax on marijuana that would fund community and small business grant programs to help those most impacted by the criminalization of marijuana. However, the legislation is almost certainly destined to fail in the current Republican-led U.S. Senate, where GOP leaders have disparaged the legislation as a superficial distraction from the work of passing coronavirus relief. RCRC did not offer comment on this latest cannabis-related legislation; however, liberalizing the federal banking laws for cannabis remains a top Congressional priority.
