Winning!  :Smokey:

http://www.marijuana.com/news/2015/06/senate-panel-votes-to-protect-state-medical-marijuana-laws/

In a strong bipartisan vote on Thursday, a key U.S. Senate panel acted to protect state medical marijuana laws from federal interference.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment that would bar the Department of Justice from spending any money to prevent states from implementing their own medical cannabis policies. The vote tally on the measure, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), was 21 – 9.

States with medical marijuana laws “need to know they’re safe from federal action,” Mikulski said in a debate before the vote. She introduced the amendment to “honor states’ rights and let the doctors do their job.”

All of the committee’s Democrats, except for Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, voted for the measure. Six Republicans — Sens. Lamar Alexander (TN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Roy Blunt (MO), Jerry Moran (KS), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Bill Cassidy (LA) and Steve Daines (MT) — also voted in favor. The language is now attached to the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill.

Feinstein said that “there may very well be a place for medical marijuana, and I think that there is.” But calling cannabis a “gateway drug,” she argued that Congress should wait for more scientific research to be conducted on its medical properties and possible harms before voting to reign in federal law enforcement. “To take a federal position on this before the research is done,” she said, “is putting the cart before the horse.”

But Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) argued that passing the amendment would actually be “helpful” to the Department of Justice. The more marijuana arrests there are results in “less and less money available to the Department of Justice to go after terrorists, to go after highjackers, to go after major crime.

“This gives them a way to say, ‘Why spend our dwindling resources on going after medical marijuana when states are regulating it and voted for it?’”

The Senate committee vote comes just one week after the full House voted 242 – 186 to add the same state medical marijuana protections to its version of the CJS Appropriations bill. Once the Senate bill clears committee, it will head to the floor where opponents could try to strike the language, but aren’t expected to.

The Appropriations Committee also approved an amendment on Thursday to protect state industrial hemp research programs from federal interference. That passed by a voice vote. Last month, the panel voted 18 – 12 to pass an amendment aimed at increasing access to medical cannabis for military veterans.

“This is another resounding victory for medical marijuana patients, their families, and their care providers,” Dan Riffle, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a press release. “Congress is making it clear that the Department of Justice and the DEA have no business interfering in state medical marijuana laws.”

:weedspin :weedspin :weedspin