Search Results: congress (388)

VoteKaleka.org
Amardeep Singh Kaleka

Amardeep Singh Kaleka didn’t see politics in his future five years ago, nor did the Indian-American filmmaker think he would become a face for the compassionate use of cannabis. The Wisconsin-raised Kaleka instead was focusing on an Emmy-award winning career. But all of that changed in 2012 when his father, founder of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, was gunned down along with five others by a white supremacist that had entered the temple apparently in an attempt to start a holy war.
In his grief, Kaleka – living in California at the time – turned to medical cannabis to help his anxiety, panic-attacks and complete lack of appetite that comes with the tragic loss of a loved one.

Wikimedia Commons


If, for some reason, you did not believe that there really is a War on Drugs underway in America, two top-ranking U.S. military generals admitted as much earlier this week in testimony before the Congressional House Armed Services Committee in Washington D.C.
Army General Charles Jacoby and Marine General John Kelly sat Tuesday before the pasty white panel of entitled U.S. Congressmen, begging the government’s purse-holders for a few more bucks, and warning that more budget cuts will translate directly into violent drug sales here at home.

Congressman Raul Grijalva, a southern Arizona Democrat, has joined 17 other congressmen in asking that President Obama to help reclassify marijuana in the federal drug “scheduling.”
Marijuana is a Schedule I substance at the federal level, which the Justice Department describes as the “most dangerous” drugs that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” alongside LSD and heroin.
The Schedule I drugs generally are associated with higher penalties. For example, trafficking between 50 and 99 kilograms of pot calls for a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. A first-time offender caught with any amount of a Schedule III drug — which includes certain prescription painkillers, ketamine, and anabolic steroids, among other things — is supposed to serve a maximum of 10 years.


Although Obama himself can’t just reorganize the drug scheduling himself, the 18 lawmakers — mostly Democrats — have asked Obama to instruct Attorney General Eric Holder to use his authority to reclassify marijuana.
Our buds over at the Phoenix New Times have more on this groundbreaking development

Jared Polis.

Earlier this week, we posted about President Barack Obama’s latest marijuana comments: He told the New Yorker that pot isn’t more dangerous than alcohol, and considers it to be less risky “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
With that new take, Boulder, Colorado Democrat Representative Jared Polis has written a letter to the President and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid inviting them to tour a Colorado dispensary and grow. Read the entire letter over at The Latest Word.

Patrick Kennedy, the former Democratic Congressman from Rhode Island, is not a fan of marijuana legalization, and he wants everyone to know about it. The son of the late Teddy Kennedy, the wildly popular long time Senator from Massachusetts, Patrick is riding the coattails of his family name on a whirlwind media tour to promote his new prohibitionist group, SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana).
After visits to nationally syndicated cable television shows like Bill Maher and Piers Morgan, Kennedy’s latest soapbox comes in the form of an op-ed piece that was graciously printed by the notoriously conservative and anti-cannabis San Diego Union-Tribune.
In the piece, Kennedy says, “When I woke up after the 2012 election, two states had voted to legalize marijuana. That day I also ‘woke up’ to how naive I had been. ”

Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.

On Tuesday, Reps. Jared Polis of Colorado and Earl Blumenauer announced two pieces of legislation at the federal level that would help end the war on cannabis in this country.
According to Polis, who joined Oregon rep Blumenauer for a teleconference Tuesday afternoon, “Americans have increasingly come to the conclusion that the drug war is a failed policy. We need to address it as a public health issue rather than a security issue.”

MySAPolitics

O’Rourke Made Name For Himself By Supporting Marijuana Legalization and By Calling for Open Debate on Drug Legalization to Address Mexico Drug War Violence
On Heels of Stunning Oregon Attorney General Upset, Drug Policy Reform Movement Demonstrates Burgeoning Political Clout
Marijuana legalization supporter Beto O’Rourke defeated eight-term Congressman Sylvestre Reyes in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Texas’s 16th Congressional district. O’Rourke is virtually assured of being the next Congressman from the heavily Democratic district.
 
In early 2009, as an El Paso city councilman, O’Rourke championed a resolution calling for a national debate on the legal regulation of currently illicit drugs. The resolution was prompted by the out-of-control violence in El Paso’s neighbor across the border, Ciudad Juarez, which has the highest murder rate of any city in the world.

StoptheDrugWar.org
Former El Paso city councilman Beto O’Rourke has defeated U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary for the seat Reyes had held since 1996

Marijuana legalization supporter Beto O’Rourke has defeated prohibitionist eight-term Congressman Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary for Texas’s 16th Congressional district.
O’Rourke vocally supports marijuana legalization, while former Border Patrol official Reyes built his career on the War On Drugs.
O’Rourke got 51.3 percent of the vote to Reyes’ 41.3 percent, according to election results from the Texas Secretary of State’s office early Wednesday morning, reports Phillip Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org.
In early 2009, when he was an El Paso city councilman, O’Rourke championed a council resolution calling for a national conversation on legalizing and regulating drugs as a possible solution to the drug cartel violence just over El Paso’s border in Mexico. The mayor vetoed the unanimously-passed resolution and the council was set to override the veto until Congressman Reyes butted in to the debate and threatened that the city would lose federal funding if it insisted on pushing the legalization conversation.
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