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WASHINGTON, (WCSC) - U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Mace announced a new cannabis bill that will give states the authority to make new cannabis reforms.
The States Reform Act would remove cannabis from Schedule I drug classification to allow states the right to determine the level of cannabis reform they want to implement.
“This bill supports veterans, law enforcement, farmers, businesses, those with serious illnesses, and it is good for criminal justice reform,” Mace said. “Furthermore, a super-majority of Americans support an end to cannabis prohibition, which is why only three states in the country have no cannabis reform at all.”
At a Monday afternoon news conference in the nation’s capital, Mace said she had been working on the bill for about nine months.
Mace said she worked on medical cannabis reform in South Carolina when she was part of the General Assembly. But she said there is a wide variety of opinions state by state on whether marijuana should be legal in any form.
South Carolina, for example, allows CBD products. But just to the south in Florida, that state allows medical marijuana.
“I would categorize this bill as what some have reported as a compromise bill,” Mace said. “There are pieces of this legislation that bring forth ideas that previous Republican bills have that have been filed and also takes into account some of that the reforms that Democrats have filed in previous legislation related to cannabis.”
Under the bill, no state or local government would be forced to change its current policies on cannabis. It would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level and then allow states to decide on prohibition or regulation.
Mace said it would regulate cannabis federally like alcohol under USDA for growers, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau for cannabis products and under the FDA for medical use.
She said it also protects military veterans by ensuring they will not be discriminated against in federal hiring for cannabis use or lose their VA healthcare benefits.
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