When Republicans who oppose federal marijuana prohibition vote against your legalization bill, you probably are doing something wrong. That is what happened last week, when the House of Representatives approved the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act by a vote of 220 to 204.
The ayes included 217 Democrats but only three Republicans, two fewer than voted for the MORE Act when the House passed it in 2020. The meager and waning GOP support for the bill suggests that Democrats want credit for trying to legalize marijuana but are not really interested in building the bipartisan coalition that would be necessary to accomplish that goal.
The 2020 vote was the first time that either chamber of Congress had approved legislation that would remove marijuana from the list of federally prohibited drugs. But as expected, the MORE Act went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Senate is now evenly divided between the two parties, with Democratic control depending on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. So even if Democrats unanimously supported a legalization bill, they would still need the support of 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster. [Read more at Reason]
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