Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding. I will talk about what I view as a massive confusion in this bill. We have heard arguments this morning, already, that States are regulating this, and I believe, ultimately, that is where this regulation, domestically, should be: within the States. Mr. Speaker, this bill ostensibly deregulating cannabis imposes a Federal tax, Federal agencies, Federal oversight. You are not de- federalizing marijuana; you are just changing the regulatory structure in which you control marijuana. That is interesting to me, and I find it very disingenuous in some ways. Mr. Speaker, what it also does is it obviates Congress' constitutional obligation to manage or oversee interstate commerce. That is what this bill does. It obviates that, while you are throwing a Federal tax on all these folks. That is a bit of a problem, but it goes to an enhanced problem. As long as we have the massive and growing social welfare state that we have today, we will incur whatever detriment comes from the criminalization, nationally, of marijuana. We must, in my opinion, have a serious discussion on this and not a congeries, a bill that is a congeries, a mishmash of ideas and hopes instead of data-driven science. As the gentleman from North Carolina just iterated to us, it is a problem. If you have prosecuted or defended--and I did both, and I defended for many years. My specialty, the area that I focused on, was drunk and drug driving cases.…”