GOP Senator Wants Congress To Have A ‘Discussion’ About Marijuana Next Year, But Says He Won’t Vote For Legalization
From toxifillers.com with love
A GOP senator says he’s hopeful that Congress will have a “discussion” about potentially creating a federal regulatory framework for marijuana in 2025, though he added that he personally wouldn’t vote to federally legalize cannabis.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on sports betting on Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) drew a parallel between state-level gambling and marijuana laws, arguing that the federal government has a responsibility to provide some level of regulatory oversight for both industries that are being legalized in a growing number of jurisdictions across the country.
But that doesn’t mean he’d support legislation to make either sports better or cannabis federally legal, the senator said.
States That Legalize Marijuana See Higher College Basketball Recruitment
Marijuana legalization boosts college basketball recruitment but harms football recruitment, according to a new study.
The research suggests that marijuana legalization is an “important, but complex, driver of college sports recruiting.”
For college basketball, teams in states with legal cannabis see an average improvement of 3.7 slots in recruiting rankings.
“In absolute terms, being located in a state with legal marijuana has an effect on recruiting that is 50 percent as strong as having a new coach,” the study states.
Conversely, cannabis legalization is associated with poorer recruitment outcomes when it comes to football teams.
There, recruitment rankings average 2.9 slots worse for colleges located in legal states compared to “otherwise similar institutions” that haven’t legalized for adult-use.
The study did not use survey data from individual athletes, so the explanations for these findings are speculative.
One hypothesis is that the difference between football and basketball recruitment could be related to the marijuana policies of the NFL and NBA.
Historically, the NFL imposed harsher financial penalties for positive cannabis tests, which could end a marginal player’s career, while the NBA had a more lenient stance.
“Given the NBA’s relatively lax stance on marijuana, it seems feasible that NBA-hopeful prospects may be more willing to use the drug in college, while future NFL players have a greater incentive to steer clear of weed,” the study says.
The authors argue that “This could explain why basketball recruiting is improved for colleges in a state with legal recreational marijuana.”
In any case, they said the results “have predictive powers regarding the future of college athletics.”
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“I would never vote, as a matter of federal legislation, to legalize gambling at the federal level—in the same way that I wouldn’t for marijuana,” Tillis said. However, he said states that have legalized either activity are effectively facilitating interstate commerce that warrants federal oversight.
“If you’re in a state that’s not legalized, then you’re naive if you don’t think they’re gambling—in the same way that if you’re in a state that doesn’t have pot legal, then you’re going to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee and buying pot that, for some reason, you can buy in western North Carolina,” he said.
The senator is referencing the fact that, while cannabis remains illegal in his state of North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians within the state’s borders recently exercised its autonomy to legalize cannabis sales in the tribe’s jurisdiction.
“There’s not a legal place you can transport it out of the Eastern Band of the Cherokees boundary, for example. So maybe we need to start thinking about rules of the road,” Tillis said. “I’m kind of going on the pot angle, but on the gambling angle we need to get this right, or it’s going to get worse, and the bad actors are going to exploit more.”
Watch the senator’s remarks on cannabis and gambling policy, starting at 1:05:10 into the video below:
The senator said there’s a “pretty substantial correlation between states who have legalized marijuana and states who are legalizing sports betting,” and the “challenge that we have is we have a patchwork of laws now around the marijuana trade, and we have a patchwork of laws around the sports betting trade.”
“So it really raises the question of, how can we get to a place where, when a market exists and it has persisted for thousands and thousands of years—a gambling market—how do we make it safe?” Tillis said. “How do we address the negative consequences which will invariably occur? And how do we resource the various agencies to make sure that we can do that?”
While the senator’s point was about negating potential harms from gambling, he’s made several comments over recent months about his similar feelings as it applies to marijuana laws.
Last month, for example, he said marijuana rescheduling and industry banking legislation are “half-assed measures,” and lawmakers should instead focus on creating a federal regulatory framework for cannabis similar to alcohol and tobacco.
“We probably need to look at a federal comprehensive framework to deal with the banking issues and scheduling issues,” Tillis said at the time. “But I think, in my opinion, we need a federal regimen that’s not unlike what we have for tobacco and alcohol, where you authenticate the crops on the front end, you mandate flavorings and delivery methods through the FDA and you allow banking.”
Without creating “one consistent framework” for marijuana, “we’re dancing around the issue,” he said.
Don Murphy, a cannabis lobbyist and former GOP Maryland legislator who attended Tuesday’s committee hearing and briefly spoke with the senator, said it was “encouraging to hear Senator Tillis telegraph a comprehensive hearing on cannabis especially considering his comment about the SAFE Banking Act being a ‘half-assed’ measure.”
“His statement also suggests cannabis policy is on the GOP’s radar, even among those members who have been less than supportive in the past,” Murphy said.
Tillis previously discussed his support for creating a federal regulatory scheme for marijuana in an interview with Green Market Report in July, affirming that there should be a framework that “treats marijuana just like tobacco.”
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Despite his position, in April Tillis joined Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) in asking federal, state and local officials what steps they were taking to enforce marijuana prohibition as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians prepared to launch recreational cannabis sales on its lands within North Carolina.
Meanwhile, back in 2017, Tillis also teamed up with bipartisan colleagues on a bill that was meant to ease researchers’ access to marijuana for studies on its medical benefits and require the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to develop recommendations for good manufacturing practices for growing and producing cannabis for research.
DEA Judge Says Agency Made A Critical ‘Blunder’ In Attempt To Force FDA Officials To Testify At Marijuana Rescheduling Hearings
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
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