Discussion by blocked sock unrelated to improving this article
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
According to Roll Call, "Changing marijuana policy needs to go beyond decriminalization to the expunging of old criminal convictions, according to two key Democratic lawmakers."
If there are party leaders backing a bill, I think it makes it more notable than it otherwise would be.
As we saw in New York and New Jersey, even when Democrats are the majority party, they can have trouble passing cannabis reform; but a lot of these cannabis reform measures will keep getting introduced in successive Congresses until the committees can figure out what legislation they want to get behind, which may end up incorporating ideas from many different bills. Even if the MORE Act doesn't end up being passed as currently written, Harris and Nadler will probably try to get some of its provisions merged into whatever the U.S. House is going to pass.
Another thing is, each of these pieces of legislation approaches the issue from a different angle; for instance, I see Ed Chung, the Center for American Progress' vice president of criminal justice reform, heavily stressing the racial angle with regard to this bill. The STATES Act, as the name suggests, focuses more on federalism and states' rights.
It's kinda like how with gun control, there'll be the Keep Americans Safe Act, which is about limiting magazine capacity to stop school shootings; but then the red flag laws are largely intended to stop suicides since they're about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill (magazine capacity is irrelevant to people wanting to kill themselves because they probably don't need to shoot themselves 11 times in the head without needing to reload; that would be more of a concern for a school shooter or a store owner wanting to hold off an angry mob of rioters). Зенитная Самоходная Установка (talk) 05:54, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
