Rand Paul submits bill to protect state medical marijuana patients and providers from feds

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Rand Paul.


Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul this week stood up for state medical marijuana rights, filing an amendment to Sen. John Walsh’s jobs bill that would allow the 33 states with some form of legalized medical cannabis to “enact and implement laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of marijuana for medical use” without the feds intervening.


“What we’re trying to do is look at the law and allow states that have changed their laws and have allowed medical marijuana to do so, for doctors to be able to prescribe and for people to be able to get those prescriptions without being worried about the federal government coming in and arresting them,” Brian Darling, spokesman for Paul’s office, told The Huffington Post yesterday.
The bill comes on top of Paul’s support for another proposal that curtails federal funding for prosecutors going after what is otherwise a state-legal pot grow. That amendment to a federal spending bill, sponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrbacher and Sam Farr of California, was approved back in May.
Paul’s latest piece of legislation goes further than that, Darlins says.
“The effort before was to defund prosecutions — so it would block the federal government from prosecuting until that appropriations bill runs out about a year later,” Darling said. “[The latest amendment] would protect the states’ rights to make those decisions about medical marijuana that wouldn’t expire when the appropriations bill comes back up.”
Sadly, political experts say that Paul’s bill likely won’t ever get to the vote as the Senate seems to be unable to reach a consensus on anything right now.

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