The House has voted to legalize marijuana on a federal level by passing the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (the MORE Act). The MORE Act is notable not only because it fully legalizes marijuana under federal law but because it was originally introduced by Senator (now Vice President-Elect) Harris in 2019. We updated our visual memorandum the day before the vote to describe changes to the MORE Act since it was originally introduced as well as the landscape for marijuana legalization after the recent election. The visual memo also describes the two other approaches to marijuana reform facing Congress: the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act (the SAFE Banking Act), which focuses specifically on the difficulties faced by the banking, insurance and payments sectors, and the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States Act (the STATES Act), which defers to state law, mandating that marijuana-related activities that are legal under state law should also be legal under federal law.
Please see our updated client memorandum for more details.