We are asking Congress to pass the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (the MORE Act) this December. It is the most significant and comprehensive legislative effort to reform our nation’s cannabis laws to date.

The MORE Act would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, thus providing individual states with the authority to be the primary arbiters of cannabis policy and eliminating the existing conflict between state-level marijuana legalization policies and federal law.

The MORE ACt would also make several other important changes to federal cannabis policy. For example, it permits physicians affiliated with the Veterans Administration for the first time to make medical cannabis recommendations to qualifying veterans who reside in legal states, and it incentivizes states to move ahead with expungement policies that will end the stigma and lost opportunities suffered by those with past, low-level cannabis convictions. 

In addition, the MORE Act would also allow the Small Business Administration to support entrepreneurs and businesses as they seek to gain a foothold in this emerging industry. For too long, men of color have been disproportionately imprisoned for cannabis entrepreneurship. The MORE Act would finally honor our effort to start businesses we’ve previously been punished for.

Cannabis reform has overwhelming support among Americans. A Gallop poll conducted in November 2020 found that 68% of U.S. adults support legalizing cannabis, with majorities of most demographic subgroups in favor. Voters across the country made their opinions clear at the voting booths this year, and now cannabis is now legal for medical use in 36 states and for recreational use in 15 states as well as Washington, D.C.

2021 will mark 50 years since President Nixon started the war on drugs, a failed campaign that led to the incarceration of millions of mostly Black people and did nothing to prevent drug overdoses. Americans on the right and the left are ready for it to end.

“Under a Biden-Harris Administration, we will decriminalize the use of marijuana and automatically expunge all marijuana use convictions and incarcerations for drug use alone,” Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said in a virtual town hall held by the labor union UNITE HERE back in September. Let’s hold her to her word.