By Tom Angell
A long-serving U.S. House member is adding his voice in support of the right of states to set their own marijuana laws without federal interference.
“States have the right to make those decisions now on their own and some of them are doing it,” Congressman Gene Green (D-TX) said in an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Thursday morning.
But there’s just one problem: Last year Green voted against an amendment that would have prevented the Justice Department from impeding the ability of states to implement their own cannabis policies. The measure came just nine votes short of passage.
The Texas congressman has, however, been supportive of narrower amendments to let states set their own medical marijuana laws, at least in recent years. Green, who has served in the House since 1993, voted six times against the medical cannabis amendment between 2003 and 2012, but began supporting it in 2014. He also voted last year and this year for measures to let military veterans receive medical marijuana recommendations from Department of Veterans Affairs doctors.
In the Thursday TV appearance, Green talked about how the political winds have shifted for cannabis policy.
“Congress, I’ve seen over the years, has changed,” he said. “We’ve had bipartisan majorities to allow for medical marijuana and things like that.”
Indeed, the medical cannabis amendment has been enacted into law for the past two fiscal years after being approved with strong votes on the House floor.
But Green, who was responding to a C-SPAN caller’s suggestion that legalizing and taxing marijuana could help fund healthcare services, was skeptical that broader changes could be achieved soon.
“But some states, Colorado, I know out west [have legalized marijuana]but on the national basis I don’t think you’ll see us doing anything like that,” he said. “Cuz I don’t know if it’s that popular.”
But in fact, marijuana legalization now consistently gets majority voter support in national polls, enjoying a much higher approval rate than Congress itself earns.
