On Friday, Senator Chuck Schumer from New York announced that the Senate bill to legalize marijuana on a national level will be filed in two months from now, April 2022.
“In the coming weeks, we’re ramping up our outreach—and we expect to introduce final legislation. Our goal is to do it in April,” said Schumer. “Then we begin the nationwide push, spearheaded by New York, to get the federal law done. As majority leader, I can set priorities. This is a priority for me.”
This is better than the previously vague notion of “coming soon,” and the Senator particularly states that marijuana will be a priority for him and the Democrats in congress.
Also of note, Jerrold Nadler, who has created his own House version of a marijuana legalization bill, also spoke at the event, iterating progress on his bill, yet remaining very vague on details.
A goal of Schumer’s is to have the bill passed by 4/20 this year, although that’s extremely unlikely. Schumer said at the event that the bill has some Republican support, but no details were given. Either way, getting all of the Democrats on board will be very difficult for the bill, let alone having it be signed off at the desk of a President who doesn’t support legalization.
Still, this is the first tangible timeline we’ve gotten from the Senator in quite a while, which has been the essential step in creating any kind of momentum toward large-scale legalization. Now that this is out of the way, a pressure campaign ensues where more and more senators will have to make public stances on the issue. That should be interesting, to say the least.
Seems there was zero mention of Nancy Mace’s competing GOP marijuana bill.
Read more at Marijuana Moment.
