420
Founder
Today, June 15, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated by a vote of 161-264 an amendment that would have prevented the DEA and the U.S. Department of Justice from spending taxpayer money to raid and prosecute medical marijuana patients and providers.
Although we lost, we can be proud that today's vote was a much stronger showing than political observers had predicted, in large part because of the nearly 10,000 letters that MPP members and allies sent to their U.S. representatives in the last week. Fully 72% of House Democrats voted for our amendment, and 15 House Republicans bucked their hostile congressional leaders and the White House to vote "yes."
This is only the third time in history that the full House has voted on binding legislation to end the federal government's war on medical marijuana. (The U.S. Senate never has.) Today's vote highlights how far we've come since just last year – the legislation received 13 more votes than it did last July, and several previously opposed Congressmen flipped their votes to "yes" ... including David Wu (D-OR), whom MPP targeted in an aggressive local campaign after he voted "no" last year, and Denny Rehberg (R-MT), whose state passed MPP's medical marijuana initiative last November.
Eleven House members, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), spoke in support of the amendment. Four House members, including notorious prohibitionist Mark Souder (R-IN), spoke in opposition to it. Souder alleged that medical marijuana is a "ruse ... dreamed up at some college dorm."
Responding to Souder's claims that the amendment would encourage teen marijuana use, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) held up MPP's giant poster showing a dramatic decline in teen use of marijuana in California since the state's medical marijuana law went into effect in 1996. Read more about the debate here.
Over the last year, MPP's lobbying staff has been targeting 120 congressional districts in order to pick up the votes needed to reach a 218-vote majority. Now that we have 161 votes, in the next year we'll be targeting a smaller number of districts to pick up the remaining 57 votes we need. We'll keep pushing every year until we get a majority.
Leading up to today's vote, the MPP staff generated thousands of constituent phone calls and letters to members of Congress, organized more than 100 meetings between swing House members and their constituents, helped several legislators send letters to their colleagues about medical marijuana, commissioned a public opinion poll to show Congress the public support for the amendment, led Montel Williams and dozens of activists from around the country in lobbying Congress, and was instrumental in ensuring that the legislation received prominent play in the voluminous news coverage of the Supreme Court's Raich decision last week. Read more about our efforts here.
If you support the work that MPP is doing – work that today forced each member of the U.S. House of Representatives to take a public stand on the arrest and imprisonment of seriously ill patients – please help us continue by making a financial contribution today. We need you standing with us as we keep up the fight.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
Marijuana Policy Project - We Change Laws!
Although we lost, we can be proud that today's vote was a much stronger showing than political observers had predicted, in large part because of the nearly 10,000 letters that MPP members and allies sent to their U.S. representatives in the last week. Fully 72% of House Democrats voted for our amendment, and 15 House Republicans bucked their hostile congressional leaders and the White House to vote "yes."
This is only the third time in history that the full House has voted on binding legislation to end the federal government's war on medical marijuana. (The U.S. Senate never has.) Today's vote highlights how far we've come since just last year – the legislation received 13 more votes than it did last July, and several previously opposed Congressmen flipped their votes to "yes" ... including David Wu (D-OR), whom MPP targeted in an aggressive local campaign after he voted "no" last year, and Denny Rehberg (R-MT), whose state passed MPP's medical marijuana initiative last November.
Eleven House members, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), spoke in support of the amendment. Four House members, including notorious prohibitionist Mark Souder (R-IN), spoke in opposition to it. Souder alleged that medical marijuana is a "ruse ... dreamed up at some college dorm."
Responding to Souder's claims that the amendment would encourage teen marijuana use, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) held up MPP's giant poster showing a dramatic decline in teen use of marijuana in California since the state's medical marijuana law went into effect in 1996. Read more about the debate here.
Over the last year, MPP's lobbying staff has been targeting 120 congressional districts in order to pick up the votes needed to reach a 218-vote majority. Now that we have 161 votes, in the next year we'll be targeting a smaller number of districts to pick up the remaining 57 votes we need. We'll keep pushing every year until we get a majority.
Leading up to today's vote, the MPP staff generated thousands of constituent phone calls and letters to members of Congress, organized more than 100 meetings between swing House members and their constituents, helped several legislators send letters to their colleagues about medical marijuana, commissioned a public opinion poll to show Congress the public support for the amendment, led Montel Williams and dozens of activists from around the country in lobbying Congress, and was instrumental in ensuring that the legislation received prominent play in the voluminous news coverage of the Supreme Court's Raich decision last week. Read more about our efforts here.
If you support the work that MPP is doing – work that today forced each member of the U.S. House of Representatives to take a public stand on the arrest and imprisonment of seriously ill patients – please help us continue by making a financial contribution today. We need you standing with us as we keep up the fight.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
Marijuana Policy Project - We Change Laws!
