Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side? A bit unaware in terms of US politics, but up here since legalization, life is exactly as it was before — people who smoked just continue to smoke but legally, people who don’t… don’t.
> Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side?
The House doesn't have to pass it, resecheduling is an executive action. (Congress could act to block it by legislation, and there is a streamlined process for doing that for reg changes in the Congressional Review Act but, it would take both Houses and -- since presumably the President will support his own administration's regulation -- sufficient supermajorities to overcome a veto.)
The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen. HHS (one federal agency) has already recommended it to DEA (another federal agency), which has the final say unless Congress were to affirmatively intervene.
With that said, they aren’t proposing to grant federal legality to the state-legal recreational marijuana market. They are planning to reclassify it from Schedule I (no recognized medical use) to Schedule III (the same category as anabolic steroids or testosterone and less restricted than Adderall), so the proposed federally legal way to get it would need a prescription and dispensing by a pharmacy or doctor.
One thing the President might be able to do is to remove legally-sourced marijuana use as a disqualification for holding a US security clearance. It is also disqualifying for other Federal background checks related to buying handguns. Maybe the change from Schedule I to Schedule III would do this automatically.
"One thing the President might be able to do is to remove legally-sourced marijuana use as a disqualification for holding a US security clearance."
Just to clarify, current use of marijuana is a disqualification for a security clearance. Past use of marijuana is not a disqualifier. When I was a younger man I used marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine and MDMA. Several of them very frequently. I disclosed all of this prior use and was able to get multiple security clearances through the years.
I no longer have nor will in the future have a security clearance so I now enjoy my legal weed.
> The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen.
The entire theme of this thread is "nothing stops the same from happening tomorrow". One president can order the DEA to reschedule it, and then the next can undo that work just as easily. We need a law, not an executive fiat. Most of the country is in favor of legalization, including most republican voters, so you'd think it would be easy to get the house on board, had it not been co-opted by right-wing extremists.
Under current federal law the President doesn't have the authority to simply order rescheduling. There is a process that must be followed and substantial changes to that process would require an Act of Congress.
The house is incapable of passing the most basic of funding for national security to let Ukraine win the war, let alone something even slightly controversial
Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress. The executive branch could always just stop enforcing the laws passed by the legislative branch, but I thought we wanted less executive overreach.
> Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress.
Marijuana can be rescheduled without an act of Congress; what is on the table is not full legalization (which, AFAIK, could also be done within the executive, because IIRC drugs can be descheduled by the same process for rescheduling) but rescheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III.
And by "on the table", I mean the first step -- FDA recommendation to DEA -- has already been done.
