From Marijuana Moment: "Outgoing Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) reflected on his 30 years of service in Congress and dedicated several minutes to talking about progress he helped achieve on marijuana reform.
“I cannot think of a life I would rat…
From Marijuana Moment: "Outgoing Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) reflected on his 30 years of service in Congress and dedicated several minutes to talking about progress he helped achieve on marijuana reform.
“I cannot think of a life I would rather have lived—the highs and the lows, the idealism and the pragmatism, the courage and the weakness, the disappointments, and yes, the joyous outcomes that I have seen here as part of this living institution in its 230 years of legislative service to the people of the United States,” he said.
“The fact is, marijuana created an illusion of disruption and of decadence in the American peoples’s minds, because in the late sixties the use of marijuana was so public and it was identified as something with hippies and people who didn’t like American culture. Well, the fact is, cannabis has tremendous service to give to the people of our country who are suffering from various maladies.”
Elderly people suffering from pain or lack of appetite, children with epilepsy and even individuals working to kick opioid addictions can benefit from marijuana, he said on the House floor. Cannabis “is not a gateway door into the use of opiates,” but rather “a way out.”
Finally, Rohrabacher described one of his most well-known legislative accomplishments: sponsoring an amendment that prohibits the Justice Department from using federal funds to interfere in state-legal medical cannabis programs. That amendment, he said, helped a burgeoning legal market balloon into a $6 billion industry.
“That is $6 billion not going to the drug cartels in Mexico. That is $6 billion of which can be spent helping people, rather than trying to put someone in jail for consuming a weed, using all the money for law enforcement, jails, judges’s time and police time, rather than trying to protect the American people. What a waste.
“My colleagues joined me in that. I think that has been a wonderful accomplishment that I am very, very proud of and very grateful that I h..
