A leader of one of the country’s largest labor unions is calling on the Biden administration to enact a complete end to federal marijuana prohibition—and couple that reform with specific policies that address the harms of the drug war, protect cannabis workers and prevent monopolization in the industry.
In a letter obtained by Marijuana Moment, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) urged Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to comprehensively tackle cannabis reform as their departments work to complete a federal marijuana scheduling review that President Joe Biden directed late last year.
“Should Congress or the Biden Administration deschedule cannabis without any health and safety, labor, and equity provisions, we run the risk of creating an industry with the same inequities that persist throughout our economy, while ignoring an opportunity to repair the harms caused by the War on Drugs,” the letter from UFCW International President Marc Perrone says.
“UFCW believes that addressing the harm caused by the prohibition on cannabis means more than regulating who owns cannabis related businesses,” he said in the letter, dated Wednesday. Biden’s scheduling directive is laudable, he said, but stressed the need to also ensure that “everyone who works in a cannabis business has family-sustaining, high quality, and high wage jobs.”
A leader of one of the country’s largest labor unions is calling on the Biden administration to enact a complete end to federal marijuana prohibition—and couple that reform with specific policies that address the harms of the drug war, protect cannabis workers and prevent monopolization in the industry.
In a letter obtained by Marijuana Moment, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) urged Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to comprehensively tackle cannabis reform as their departments work to complete a federal marijuana scheduling review that President Joe Biden directed late last year.
“Should Congress or the Biden Administration deschedule cannabis without any health and safety, labor, and equity provisions, we run the risk of creating an industry with the same inequities that persist throughout our economy, while ignoring an opportunity to repair the harms caused by the War on Drugs,” the letter from UFCW International President Marc Perrone says.
“UFCW believes that addressing the harm caused by the prohibition on cannabis means more than regulating who owns cannabis related businesses,” he said in the letter, dated Wednesday. Biden’s scheduling directive is laudable, he said, but stressed the need to also ensure that “everyone who works in a cannabis business has family-sustaining, high quality, and high wage jobs.”
“Equity considerations and worker protections like those that UFCW and our allies have fought for at length in many states, must both be part of any federal law or administrative action related to de-scheduling cannabis,” Perrone said.