Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN.

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud today to stand for this legislation with the party of democracy and freedom for the people, rather than the party of Big Brother and failed drug authoritarianism.

Do you know that 150 million Americans have used marijuana? Half of the country. That is just the people who are being honest about it. Half of the country has used marijuana, but you can still be denied a security clearance and government employment for having once used marijuana. That is plainly stupid, wrong, and unfair.

We are disqualifying tens of millions of qualified and excellent job applicants for Federal Government employment, our fellow citizens, our constituents. In Democratic districts and Republican districts, we are disqualifying those people from being Federal Government employees solely because they have used marijuana.

My amendment is one that every Member of the House should support. It says that Americans should not be denied a security clearance simply because they have used marijuana.

The longer I spend time in Congress, Mr. Speaker, the more I realize that in America, change comes from the States. It comes from the people. That is how we got child labor laws. That is how we got women's suffrage. That is how we got direct election of U.S. Senators, and now, so too with our draconian, obsolete, and failed marijuana laws.

Look at what is happening out in America. Eighteen States, plus Washington, D.C., have now passed laws allowing adult use of marijuana. In other words, they have accepted the antiprohibition principle that is in our Constitution. It is not that alcohol is so great for everybody in every circumstance, or marijuana is so great for everybody in every circumstance. It is that criminal prohibition and criminalization of large parts of our own population don't work.

It is legal in 18 States. In 27 States, it has been decriminalized. In a majority of the States, it is no longer criminal. In 36 States, the vast majority of America, more than two-thirds of the States, medical use of marijuana has been approved. In other words, it is legal in the vast majority of States of the country to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

What a massive outbreak of common sense in America against the GOP's failed authoritarian war on marijuana that depends on paranoid tropes from the 1970s. It is like they saw ``Reefer Madness'' in middle school and never got over it.

I concede our party is not for the kind of cocaine-fueled orgies that a freshman Republican Representative bragged about this week, but we do understand that their marijuana prohibition laws don't work for our people.

In any event, Mr. Speaker, we can all agree that we should not be denying our constituents the opportunity to serve in Federal office by denying them a security clearance simply because they have used marijuana.

I think the distinguished gentleman seems to concede the general principle that we should not be denying the opportunity of Federal employment to half of the country because they have used marijuana before.

So, his argument seems to be: We have denied so many people that this would be an imposition on Federal bureaucrats to go back and tell people when they have been wronged in the past simply by telling the truth and saying that they have once used marijuana.

In fact, most of these agencies don't even require that there was any kind of criminal prosecution or conviction. They ask you, ``Have you used marijuana?'' If people say, ``Yes, I used it once in college,'' or whatever, they can't get a job. That makes no sense. We are doing that to our constituents.

Yes, let's go back and see how many people we have denied the opportunity of Federal employment to because they have used marijuana, which is lawful in most of the country now, either on a medicinal basis or on a recreational basis for adult consenting individuals who decide that is a decision they want to make.

Let's grow up as a country about this, and let's stop discriminating against our own people.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for pointing out that my amendment would apply not only to people who have sought public employment in the past and been denied because they have been honest enough to admit that they have once used marijuana but to private contractors. We are denying people the opportunity to do business with the government if they tell the truth about that.

I am urging all of my colleagues, wherever you are in terms of your particular State, let's stop discriminating.

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