USA: House of Representatives wants to legalize marijuana

The Democratic-dominated US House of Representatives has come out in favor of legalizing marijuana. Even if the bill risks failure in the Senate, it sends a signal.

The United States House of Representatives voted to legalize marijuana at the federal level. 228 lawmakers in the Democrat-dominated House of Parliament voted to remove marijuana from the U.S. drug law. 164 MPs voted against. The majority of the votes against came from the Republicans. The bill risks failure in the Senate because Republicans have a majority in this House of Parliament.

The vote in the House of Representatives still sends a signal. A spokesman for then-candidate and now-elected president Joe Biden said in September that the Democrat was in favor of decriminalizing marijuana and automatically clearing criminal records for drug possession. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris – who will remain in the Senate until next month – also supports legalization. He presented a corresponding bill to the Senate.

Several states in the United States have already legalized marijuana

Biden and Harris are expected to be sworn in on January 20 in Washington. A number of US states have already legalized marijuana and others are planning to decriminalize it. As president, Biden could also address the issue at the federal level without Congress passing a law.

The chairman of the judicial commission in the House of Representatives, Jerry Nadler, had presented the project to the House. The Democrat said after the vote: “For too long we have treated marijuana as a matter of criminal justice rather than a matter of personal choice and public health.” The bill would also involve long-awaited steps to tackle the problem of the numerous victims of the “war on drugs”, invoked by the latter, particularly among minorities.