This week's cannabis injustice

How much longer can we let this go on?

This week, we learned that the new administration has reassigned or asked for resignations from dozens of staffers for their past recreational use of cannabis.

Once again, our nation's unfounded, unrealistic, and unfair cannabis policy has failed us. In this case, the federal marijuana prohibition effectively targeted young White House staffers – including those from states (like Oregon) that have decriminalized recreational cannabis use.

This disappointing incident shows – yet again – that this wasteful, wrongheaded policy hurts us all. In addition to decimating our communities, wasting billions, and filling our prisons with nonviolent offenders, it has failed hundreds of thousands of young Black and Brown men who have had their lives destroyed because of selective enforcement of cannabis laws.

I have been working longer than any elected official in the United States to reform these outdated, unjust laws. Recently, we've made tremendous strides as state after state has repealed harmful cannabis prohibitions. Still, this news shows that the federal prohibition is holding us back and we can't give up until we've brought the War on Drugs to its long-overdue end.

Earl