Dana Rohrabacher To Feds: Respect State Marijuana Laws

Like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) is occasionally doing things that aren't completely crazy, like defending the Taliban or accusing the Obama Administration of intentionally lying to the American public about the Islamic terrorists who carried out the attack on the U.S. embassy in Bengazi, Libya last year (because you know how soft Obama and his army of drones is on Islamic terrorists).

To wit: Rohrabacher has authored legislation that would amend the U.S. Controlled Substances Act to prohibit the federal government from prosecuting people who do not violate state marijuana laws.

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If it becomes law, the Respect State Marijuana Laws act would strengthen medical marijuana access in the 18 states (and the District of Columbia) which have already passed such laws, as well as recreational pot smoking in both Colorado and Washington State.

Rohrabacher's co-sponsors on the bill include Congressmen Justin Amash, (R-Michigan), Earl Blumenauer, (D-Oregon), Steve Cohen, (D-Tennessee), Jared Polis, (D-Colorado), and Don Young, (R-Alaska). “This bipartisan bill represents a common-sense approach that establishes federal government respect for all states' marijuana laws,” Rohrabacher said. “It does so by keeping the federal government out of the business of criminalizing marijuana activities in states that don't want it to be criminal.”

It's been more than four months since voters in Colorado and Washington State upped the ante on the Obama Administration, which first promised to respect state marijuana laws, then vigorously cracked down on California's burgeoning medical marijuana industry in late 2011. So far, the Justice Dept. has only said that it is monitoring how those states implement their new recreational pot-smoking bills.

Earlier this month, for the first time in history, the Pew Research Group found that roughly 60 percent of Americans feel the federal government should not interfere with states that have legalized marijuana.

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Nick Schou

Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).

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