Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here. I got a kick out of the gentleman from Tennessee showing his age. He is talking about pot when it was 2 percent THC. He is thinking pot is still this drug where people get goofy and they eat Cheetos and nacho cheese Doritos.

He is not talking about the 99 percent THC pot that is being sold in some of these States where they have legalized recreational pot. I think that is really fun and anachronistic; very good to go back and think about how things were in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

Let's talk about a Mother Jones article that I have before me where they are analyzing the use of pot, and they are talking about, hey, look, this is what happens, you start seeing paranoia and psychosis come in. They are referring to New Zealand studies, long-term longitudinal studies about the dangers of pot.

That is interesting. We are not going to even talk about that because we don't have time to talk about that because we are focusing here on descheduling marijuana. What that does is that incentivizes marijuana use and distribution.

But this bill is also reckless in its approach. It provides no limits on or requirements to clearly identify the potency of marijuana or its extracts or concentrates. In 1995, for instance, the THC concentration was about 4 percent on average. Today, it goes between 20 and 99 percent.

It also doesn't deal with what the Surgeon General says needs to be the case, that the minimum age limit should be age 25. This doesn't get into any age limit. It doesn't cover that, yet that is what the Surgeon General says.

In fact, the Surgeon General's advisory says the human brain continues to develop from birth into the mid 20s, vulnerable to the effects of addictive substances, I don't know, like marijuana. In fact, it goes on to say frequent marijuana use during adolescence is associated with changes in the areas of the brain involving attention, memory, decision-making, and motivation.

Adolescent marijuana use is associated with declines in IQ, school performance and attendance, and life satisfaction, increased rates of suicide attempts.

You know what this bill does? It is a lot of fun, folks. What it does is, it says you can distribute this, under Federal law anyway, you can distribute this to an 11-year-old kid. The 11-year-old kid is going to have marijuana, be able to use it. You can't do anything to them here for that, that is for sure.

What it does do is it creates a tax crime. It creates a tax crime. You get rid of your marijuana crime, it creates some tax crimes. We all know how great the Tax Code is for ease of use and understanding.

Section 3 of the bill removes marijuana from the schedule of the Controlled Substances Act. It would no longer be a Federal crime to possess or sell marijuana, including to 11 year olds. Section 5, however, puts it into the Tax Code.

I think there is another fun aspect here. It talks about 600,000 arrests annually yet, the reality is that is for State and local crimes. In fact, there were 1,100 marijuana convictions in 2020 under Federal law. You know what those convictions were? Those were for transport and distribution. Now you are not going to be able to get to anybody for that.

Let's talk about how well this has worked in the L.A. Times pieces that talk about this. The L.A. Times does a massive expose. What do they find out? They say Prop 64 was going to solve all these problems, solve the problems. Instead what you have are thousands of illegal grow dispensaries. Why? Because they have a Byzantine code like what these guys are setting up here today. So you have a crisis in L.A. County, San Bernardino County and also in Riverside County.

Those grow farms use forced labor, as Mr. Bentz so eloquently talked about, the Oregon grow farms. These are being run in southern California by the cartels, who originate in Mexico, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, and China. Yeah, that is what you are going to do, you are going to Federalize this. Well done. This is a piece of garbage. I oppose this legislation.

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