This week in our short recap of the week, a new poll has shown that Republican voters are overwhelmingly in favor for state legal/states rights cannabis markets with minimal federal regulation. Several congressional lawmakers have called the FDA as being a disappointment and their response being completely insufficient regarding CBD/hemp regulations. A prominent cannabis favoring congressman has called out drug testing as part of a modern day issue causing labor shortages and supply chain issues. Player included below for those on the go.
Majority Of Republicans Support Variety Of Marijuana Reforms
Fabrizio,Lee & Associates recently completed a survey of 1,000 self-reported Republican voters nationally. The report states that GOP voters are extremely supportive of legal cannabis companies being given the same rights as any other legal business and that GOP voters want the federal government to get out of the states’ way and let them, not the federal government, regulate cannabis.
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- 73% agree that legal Cannabis Companies should be entitled to the same rights as any other legal business
- 76% agree that if states legalize Cannabis, the Federal Government should not fight the state
- 65% say that legal Cannabis companies should have access to the banking system and be able to open and use bank accounts like any other legal business.
- 69% favor sentence reviews for people convicted of nonviolent cannabis crimes
- 56% favor expunging cannabis convictions from a person’s record if adult use of cannabis is now legal in their state.
- 73% favor legalizing cannabis for medical purposes
- GOP voters are split 47%-46% on legalizing cannabis for adult use.
Learn how to become a medical cannabis patient in Texas
This comes about as Texans were recently made aware again of comments made by Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick earlier this year. Republican Dan Patrick made comments to Texas media company owners Liz Grow and Patrick Pope of GrowHouse Media at a town hall meeting to support his and Senator Donna Campbell’s campaigns this year.
Patrick said publicly that he is “just not there yet,” with the reasoning being that the “public (among other groups) is just not there yet.”
Texans across the political spectrum sounded off to this noting that even with the numbers from earlier polls, that Patrick was clearly in the wrong when he made the statement. The video created by the two advocates of their experience features headlines showing that polls show a support that runs contrary to Dan’s statements.
Texans will be voting on their entire legislative makeup and most statewide positions to include but not limited to Governor, Lt. Gov, Ag Commissioner, and Attorney General in the upcoming November election.
The FDA response to lack of CBD regulations and Hemp Bill advice was labeled “Completely Insufficient”
Several members of congress sent a letter to the FDA to express disappointment in a response the FDA gave to them regarding questions that they had about hemp and cbd products. The letter opens stating that, This one-page technical assistance, which took your agency nearly four months to provide in response to our request, is simply a reformatting of a document provided to Congress over two years ago.
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Further stating that it does not address provisions of the bill drafted specifically to address product safety, and is a completely insufficient response at this moment when cannabidiol (CBD) products are proliferating around the country.
Reps. Kathleen Rice (D-NY), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Angie Craig (D-MN) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) were the congress members behind the writing of the letter.
The letter continues with noting that states have stepped in to create their own dietary and food guidelines or framework to deal with the issue. These state regulations created,” are a direct result of FDA’s inaction, lack of clarity, and refusal to engage meaningfully on this issue.”
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The bipartisan group noted to the FDA that despite their calls for more data that, “Waiting for perfect answers to every conceivable question before taking any steps to establish a federal regulatory framework is unacceptable.
A US congressman has stated that ending drug testing for the workplace could solve many Us supply chain issues and labor disputes.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) has proposed that the drug testing standards for the workforce undergo changes. Noting the recent rail strikes that have been averted, he notes that the job has a requirement of specialized skills, but a job pool shrunk by drug testing requirements.
These are requirements that place qualified candidates out of the running for job positions over items they ingested up to six weeks prior to a test. This also gets qualified workers disqualified from continuing with a job by drug test, when they were not intoxicated or consuming on the job.
“A lot of these shortcomings in terms of the supply chain are that people do not qualify for the jobs because they’ve used marijuana sometime in the last six weeks, which doesn’t affect their ability to do their job, but it throws them out of the consideration,” Blumenauer said.
This runs into the clash on ideologies as presented by Republican Texas Senator Brian Birdwell in the 2019 legislative session when he mentioned on the Senate floor that his constituents were worried about people consuming cannabis. The reason for their worry was that employers have a hard time finding candidates for jobs when they’re failing drug tests for cannabis.
Advocates in the past have noted that a possible answer to both of these issues would be to drop the current drug testing standard which looks for metabolites created by processing cannabis ingested. To then move to a standard of identifying intoxicated individuals to deal with the safety issue at the root of the drug testing discussion.