[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4519]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
                ENDING FEDERAL MARIJUANA PROHIBITION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Hawaii (Ms. Gabbard) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. GABBARD. Mr. Speaker, I am rising today to urge my colleagues to 
support H.R. 1227, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act, which 
I have introduced with my Republican colleague, a fellow Army veteran 
and former prosecutor from the State of Virginia, Congressman Tom 
Garrett, where we are seeking to address our outdated and widely 
problematic marijuana laws by federally decriminalizing marijuana.
  FBI reports have shown that, in 2011 alone, an individual in the 
United States was arrested for marijuana use, sale, or possession every 
42 seconds--every 42 seconds--mostly in poor and minority communities. 
Our current laws are turning everyday Americans into criminals, sending 
them to jail, ruining their lives, tearing apart families, and wasting 
huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate 
people for marijuana use, a drug that has been proven time and time 
again to be far less dangerous than alcohol both for individual 
consumers as well as for the people around them.
  Dr. Donald Abrams, who is chief of oncology at San Francisco General 
Hospital, has talked about how, in the 37 years that he has worked and 
served as a physician, the number of patients that he has admitted to 
his hospital with marijuana complications is zero. The number of 
patients that he has admitted due to alcohol use is ``profound.''
  So, rather than actually helping people, our current laws are turning 
them into criminals, forever impacting their future and the future of 
their families. Over the years, we have spent hundreds of billions of 
dollars locking people up for nonviolent marijuana offenses, creating 
strain within our criminal justice system, and clogging court 
calendars, resulting in further overcrowding of our prisons.
  Now, just a few weeks ago, I had the chance to go and visit a number 
of our prisons and jails in Hawaii, where I saw firsthand the crumbling 
infrastructure, the extreme overcrowding and facilities in dire need of 
upgrades, as well as the shortage of services that are actually needed 
to help rehabilitate people and reduce our recidivism rates.
  So whether you personally think that marijuana use is good or bad, 
whether you would choose to use marijuana or not, the question is: 
Should we really be sending people to jail and turning them into 
criminals for it? The answer is no. The fiscal impacts and the social 
impacts of our current policy are having devastating ripple effects on 
individuals and our communities and are only continuing to perpetuate 
the problem.
  For example, the contradiction that we see currently between State 
and Federal laws on marijuana has created a serious problem for many of 
our local businesses. I have talked with local bankers in my home State 
of Hawaii who expressed great frustration, and even confusion, about 
the contradiction between our laws with the fact that even though our 
State of Hawaii has legalized and authorized marijuana dispensaries to 
grow, process, and dispense medical marijuana, Federal law prohibits 
banks and credit unions from offering any type of financial services to 
both businesses and individuals whose financial transactions have 
anything to do with marijuana.
  So what this means in practical terms is that our State-recognized 
and licensed medical marijuana dispensary owners as well as their 
employees can't open a bank account. They can't get a loan from our 
local bank. The businesses, literally, have to hold thousands, or even 
millions, of dollars from their transactions and have to conduct their 
transactions in cash. Businesses that provide services to these medical 
marijuana dispensaries are also unable to access financial services due 
to the gaps between Federal and State law.
  So as we look at ways that we need to update our outdated drug 
policies and the need for us to reform a very broken criminal justice 
system, we need to take into account the growing body of evidence that 
suggests the medicinal benefits of marijuana, including, preventing 
epileptic seizures, reducing anxiety, and even halting the growth of 
cancer cells.
  However, the FDA still currently classifies marijuana as a schedule I 
drug, basically saying that marijuana is just like heroin, LSD, and 
MDMA, ignoring the fact that at least 28 States, including my home 
State of Hawaii, have already accepted the medical use of marijuana 
under State law.
  In addition to passing H.R. 1227, we need to require the FDA to 
remove marijuana from schedule I based on State-accepted medical use. 
These reforms that we are calling for in this bipartisan bill are 
common sense and they are long overdue, long overdue changes that will 
help to reduce the strain on our criminal justice system, create 
certainty and reduce contradictions and confusion between State and 
Federal law, and update those Federal laws to actually meet the needs 
and progress that States are making across the country.

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