There Were Several Drug Policy Amendments to the CJS Bill

Reformers have mostly been talking about the Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment that passed last night. I looked at the vote a little while ago, and realized that nearly 50 Republicans voted yes on the amendment, making it an even more historic occurrence than I'd realized.

There were three several other votes, though, that are important to know about. One of them, which passed, is a mean-spirited amendment to block the clemency initiative that Pres. Obama and AG Holder are taking. If it becomes law it will seek to prevent the administration from transferring staff temporarily to increase the Pardon Attorney Office's capacity. There was another good amendment that passed, though, by Rep. Steve Cohen, which shifts $5 millions of DEA funding, to spend it instead on grants to state and local police agencies to help them reduce the backlog in rape testing kits. Cohen sponsored another amendment that didn't get passed, which have shifted three times as much money from the DEA to the Legal Services Corporation.

We have info, including how every member of Congress voted, online here. There's a zipcode lookup form you can use, a the top of the page, to identify your own US Representatives and how they voted.

Update: There were more relevant votes than I'd realized when I wrote this. One of them had to do with hemp. We'll add them as able.