Since 2014, members of Congress have passed annual spending bills that have included a provision protecting those who engage in the state-sanctioned use and dispensing of medical cannabis from federal prosecution by the Department of Justice. The amendment maintains that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states from “implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

It is time for Congress to expand these important protections to adult-use legalization states. Today, nearly one in four Americans reside in a jurisdiction where the adult use of cannabis is legal under state statute.

Known as the Blumenauer-McClintock-Norton-Lee amendment, after Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D), a founding member of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, Tom McClintock (R) Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), and Barbara Lee, the amendment removes the word "medical" from the existing language -- thereby extending these protections to both qualified patients and to adults, as well as to those licensed in both the medical and recreational industries.

The fix is literally that simple.

This expanded language passed the House last year, but was later removed by the Senate leadership.

Send a message right now to your Senators and urge them to keep this language in the final version of the CJS appropriations bill!