Two Democratic congressmen filed an amendment to the large-scale spending measure that would prevent the use of federal funding to interfere with local and state laws allowing for the sale and use of psilocybin as a medical aid.
Robert Garcia (D) and Earl Blumenauer(D) want to attach a psychedelics bill to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations legislation. The House Rules Committee will decide whether or not the amendment is made before a vote on the floor.
Separate legislation was introduced by the members in September to prohibit federal interference in jurisdictions that legalize psychedelic.
The CJS amendment states, however, that funds appropriated under the spending bill may not be used “to prevent any State, District of Columbia or territory of the United States or any local government unit from implementing their own laws authorizing use, distribution or sale of medical psilocybin, possession or research of it, or its cultivation.”
This language is similar with an existing CJS Rider that has been renewed annually since 2014, prohibiting the use federal funds to interfere with state medical marijuana programs. The House has passed several attempts to extend that protection to adult-use cannabis laws, but they have not been made into law.
Garcia, speaking to Marijuana Moment on a Tuesday phone interview before the public posting of the psilocybin amendement, said: “I think there’s a chance to have a progressive worldview about legalization and [preventing] harm for people who, in many cases, are receiving huge medicinal or recreational benefits from cannabis and psychoedelics.”
The psychedelics measure, if it is approved and passed, would focus specifically on medical psilocybin legislation. Its practical impact, however, may be limited, as no state has explicitly authorized it for therapeutic purposes, like they do for marijuana with conditions and doctor’s recommendations.
The psychedelics legislation that has been passed in states such as Colorado and Oregon is more open-ended. It acknowledges the therapeutic potential in substances like psilocybin, without requiring adults jump through hoops in order to prove their patient status to receive state-legal services. Locally, the focus of psychedelics law reform has been primarily on deprioritizing crime.
The Rules Committee has yet to decide whether it will allow the CJS bill to advance to the floor after scheduling a meeting. The panel, which is under Republican control, has repeatedly blocked marijuana and psychedelics-related measures during the appropriations processes, including Garcia’s repeated attempts at securing reform to prevent federal job applicants from being drug tested for marijuana.
He’s most recently tried to attach employment protections to a bill that covers Financial Services and General Government. This is the same legislation that Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, (D-DC), and Blumenauer hope to use in order to lift the federal ban preventing Washington, D.C., from legalizing marijuana.
The psilocybin proposal is more innovative, but the Rules Committee allowed a separate GOP-led psychedelics measure to be considered on the floor, as part of another Appropriations Bill that was ultimately passed by the entire House.
One of the amendments passed by the House would allow doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs to recommend medical cannabis to veterans. The other would encourage the research of the therapeutic potential of psychedelics such as psilocybin or MDMA.
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The Senate Appropriations Committee adopted a measure in its version of MilCon/VA legislation which would allow VA doctors to make medical marijuana recommendations. This will increase the chances that the reform makes it into the final package of laws to be signed.
The House also approved in September a pair of measures for psychedelic research, as well an amendment to create federal labeling requirements relating to marijuana interactions with prescribed drugs, as part of the Department of Defense budget bill.
The House Appropriations Committee attached a report to the spending legislation that includes a separate section stating that “VA clarified that VA statutes and regulations do not prohibit a veteran who earns income from state-legalized marijuana activities from receiving a certificate of VA eligibility for home loan benefits.”
In July, the Senate passed a defense bill that included provisions prohibiting intelligence agencies such as the CIA or NSA from denying security clearances solely based on past marijuana usage. Other cannabis proposals such as that of Sen. Brian Schatz, D-HI, to allow medical marijuana use by vets , did not make it into the National Defense Authorization Act.
The Rules Committee blocked more than a dozen amendments on marijuana and psychedelics in the House version of NDAA. This happened in July. This includes a measure that was introduced by Garcia which would have prevented denial of security clearances to federal workers due to prior cannabis use.
In September, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee approved a bipartisan standalone bill that would prohibit the denial or refusal of federal employment and security clearances because a candidate has used marijuana in the past.
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Photo by Dick Culbert.
The article House Committee to Consider Protecting State Medical Psilocybin Laws from Federal Interference under New Amendment first appeared on Marijuana Minute.
