[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H96]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     LET STATES REGULATE MARIJUANA

  (Mr. POLIS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I was gravely concerned last week when 
Attorney General Sessions removed the guidance of the Cole memo 
regarding the way that the Department of Justice treats marijuana in 
jurisdictions where it is legal for medicinal or commercial 
circumstances. I happen to represent one of those States, the State of 
Colorado, which has a regulatory system for marijuana that has now been 
called into jeopardy through a Federal overreach.
  Effectively, Attorney General Sessions has left the entire fate of 
not just the industry and those who work in it but also consumers in my 
State in the hands of 93 U.S. attorneys, including the one for our 
State who, if they wake up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, 
could engage in a mass enforcement action against residents of Colorado 
who are following our State law.
  I call on President Trump to overturn his attorney, and I call upon 
this body to put the appropriate funding restrictions, based on the 
McClintock-Polis amendment, into the final funding bill in the next few 
weeks to prevent the Department of Justice from using funds given to 
them by Congress to contravene State law in jurisdictions that have 
chosen to regulate marijuana.

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