Political Quotes

“I appreciate the gentleman's comments and his courtesy. Listening to my colleague from Arizona sort of made my head hurt. This legislation does not legalize cannabis across the country. What it does is it stops the Federal Government from interfering with what States have decided to do. No small amount of irony, her State just approved legalizing cannabis. And this legislation would prevent the Federal Government from interfering with what her voters decided. I have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. I was in the Oregon legislature when we were the first State to decriminalize cannabis. I have been working from Bangor, Maine, to Santa Barbara ever since trying to end the failed prohibition of cannabis. It is happening today, because it has been demanded by the voters, by facts, by the momentum behind this issue. It is now a $17 billion industry. It employs 250,000 people. It is powerful in terms of economic development. More important, as my friend from Massachusetts said, this is an opportunity to strike a blow against the failed war on drugs that has literally destroyed hundreds of thousands of young Black lives. Black people use cannabis no more frequently than Whites, but they are arrested about four more times, and in some parts of the country, it is much, much greater. We are still arresting or citing 600,000 people a year for something that the majority of Americans now think should be legal.…”