As a 23-year-old serving his first time period within the Oregon state legislature, Representative Earl Blumenauer cosponsored the primary invoice within the nation to decriminalize small quantities of marijuana.
More than 50 years later, the congressman from Portland is getting ready to retire after almost three many years on Capitol Hill, and mounting a lonely marketing campaign to steer his fellow Democrats, together with President Biden, to press for legalization of marijuana on the federal degree as a central plank of their political platforms.
“I have been doing this longer than any other politician in America, and I can say unequivocally, no politician was ever punished for being on the cutting edge of legalization of cannabis,” Mr. Blumenauer, who has change into Congress’s prime advocate for altering marijuana coverage, mentioned in an interview. “This is something every candidate should embrace.”
Mr. Blumenauer has urged officers near Mr. Biden to make the difficulty a extra distinguished a part of the president’s re-election message. He argues that legalization will not be solely good coverage, however a probably “electric” political subject that would assist the 81-year-old Mr. Biden attraction to younger individuals who polls present have drifted away from him, and whose backing could possibly be very important to his probabilities of profitable a second time period.
“I take every chance I get to nudge my friends in the Biden administration,” he mentioned this month at a hashish coverage discussion board. “The quickest way to engage young people, minority voters, to break the mold, is to come out foursquare for legalization. For compassion. For people who have been caught up in the legal morass of the failed war on drugs, and make a clean break of it.”
Legalization, in some type, is overwhelmingly common throughout the nation, with 88 % of Americans saying marijuana ought to be authorized for medical or leisure use, in accordance with a January survey by the Pew Research Center. Twenty-four states have legalized small quantities of marijuana for grownup leisure use, and 38 states have permitted it for medicinal functions.
But federal regulation nonetheless prohibits the use and possession of weed, and it places marijuana beneath a classification reserved for probably the most harmful medicine, together with heroin and LSD, that the federal government deems to have a “high abuse potential” and “no accepted medical use.” Advocates have urged the federal authorities to re-evaluate that classification and take away it from the checklist of managed substances altogether.
Mr. Blumenauer, now 75, estimated that he has been concerned, indirectly or one other, with each state-level hashish coverage initiative that has cropped up since his days as a “child member” of the state legislature. Back then, the federal government was nonetheless jailing continual late-stage alcoholics and a motion to chill out anti-weed legal guidelines was rising within the face of the conflict on medicine.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Blumenauer, along with his signature bow tie and bicycle-shaped lapel pin (he’s an avid bicycle owner and commutes by bicycle), has led the cost to make marijuana extra broadly accessible. He has pushed laws to expunge federal marijuana use and possession crimes from felony information, broaden medical marijuana analysis, guarantee veterans can entry medical marijuana, tax and regulate marijuana, permit authorized marijuana companies to entry monetary providers and extra.
He based and is a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, and he was honored this month by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws with an inaugural “Trailblazer Award” named for him.
“He has literally been our most important and most influential advocate. He’s played an enormously powerful role,” Keith Stroup, the group’s founder, who lobbied the Oregon state legislature on hashish coverage throughout Mr. Blumenauer’s early statehouse years, mentioned in presenting the award.
Mr. Blumenauer, who introduced within the fall that he wouldn’t search re-election, argued that this was the yr to “break the logjam” and get federal adjustments throughout the end line.
He cited a spate of profitable state poll initiatives to legalize marijuana indirectly, on prime of bipartisan backing within the House for numerous items of hashish laws and help from prime Democrats together with Senators Chuck Schumer of New York, the bulk chief, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Finance Committee, for federal legalization.
With Republicans, lots of whom have opposed hashish legalization, accountable for the House, congressional motion this yr is an exceedingly lengthy shot. But Mr. Blumenauer pointed to Mr. Biden’s personal evolution on the difficulty as a glimmer of hope.
The president, who has lengthy been personally conservative on marijuana coverage, directed his administration to “expeditiously” evaluate how marijuana is scheduled beneath federal regulation. Though that evaluate continues to be underway, U.S. well being officers really helpful the Drug Enforcement Administration downgrade marijuana to a decrease classification that covers medicine, similar to ketamine, which can be seen as much less harmful and that may be obtained legally with a prescription.
Mr. Biden additionally made a high-profile point out of the difficulty throughout his State of the Union deal with this yr, and he has pardoned hundreds of individuals convicted of nonviolent drug offenses in an effort to treatment racial disparities within the justice system.
Vice President Kamala Harris just lately referred to as marijuana’s federal classification “absurd,” and mentioned that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.” And this month, simply earlier than April 20 — thought-about a vacation by marijuana devotees — Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, emphasised that Mr. Biden had been “very, very clear he doesn’t believe that anyone should be in jail or be prosecuted just for using or possessing marijuana.”
Still, Mr. Blumenauer mentioned, Mr. Biden wanted to do extra to prioritize adjustments within the regulation, together with by directing the D.E.A. to take away hashish from the managed substances checklist altogether, which might finish the federal prohibition on the drug. Doing so, he argued, would make a daring assertion to voters and telegraph a dedication to ending the conflict on medicine, selling social justice, increasing medical analysis and boosting companies.
“Honestly, I can’t think of anything else that would have this impact immediately, in terms of aligning interests with young people, with racial justice, solving real-life problems for thousands of businesses and millions of people,” Mr. Blumenauer mentioned.
He identified gradual federal motion on the difficulty as “inertia” generated by 40 years of a coverage of prohibition and once-broad public disapproval of marijuana utilization.
But he argued that decisive motion was essential to reap the potential political advantages of the difficulty in what Democrats have solid as an existential election cycle.
“It would send shock waves. People wouldn’t expect Joe Biden to do this,” Mr. Blumenauer mentioned, including {that a} robust place for legalization would probably arrange a distinction with former President Donald J. Trump. “It’s one of the few things that could really upset the apple cart.”
In truth, Mr. Blumenauer contended that it was an embrace of pot legalization that gained Democrats management of the Senate. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, whose victory in 2022 offered Democrats with their two-vote majority, included legalization in his platform. Mr. Blumenauer additionally famous {that a} marijuana poll initiative in Arizona had drawn progressive voters to the polls in 2020 to assist clinch the battleground state for Mr. Biden.
“It’s time to unlock the full power of legalization, being straight with the American public and making sure that we mobilize the pro-cannabis electorate, because we need it,” Mr. Blumenauer mentioned on the marijuana coverage summit. “Democracy is on the line this election.”
Mr. Blumenauer, who has about seven months left in Congress, vowed to maintain pushing for coverage adjustments, even after leaving workplace.
“If we can break the logjam,” he mentioned, “I think it ceases to be very controversial — except it’s controversial that we’re not doing more, faster.”