The legal weed bill passed the Senate easily, as it has the past two years. But the bill hit a wall in the House, where an effort to suspend rules to bring the bill to the floor fell far short.
“It is our best chance to pass legalization of small amounts of marijuana,” Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears (D-Bennington) told fellow senators before their vote early Wednesday evening.
The measure, which would have legalized possession of up to an ounce of marijuana starting in July 2018, passed in the Senate on a voice vote, with only a few dissenters. The bill would also have created a commission to study taxed and regulated sale of marijuana.
Wednesday’s vote came after Gov. Phil Scott vetoed a similar bill last month. But the Republican governor reached an agreement with the Democrat-controlled legislature Wednesday on a slightly revised version.
Administration Secretary Susanne Young said after the Senate vote that the governor would sign the bill if it reached him. But the governor made no effort to encourage House Republicans to help make that happen.
“I had never made a commitment to push the House and what they were going to do,” Scott said Wednesday night after the House voted. “I said it was up to them.”
Nonetheless, Scott argued that he was serious about trying to enact a legalization bill. Otherwise, he said, “we wouldn’t have worked so hard to come to an agreement with the House and Senate.”
After the Senate’s vote, the bill went to the House, where rules required that it wait a day before coming to a vote. Members can vote to suspend rules to advance a bill more quickly, but that takes three-quarters of the chamber.
House Majority Leader Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington) called for a rules suspension to take up the bill Wednesday evening. But she fell far short of the 107 votes she needed after a 78-63 roll call vote.
The vote was largely along party lines, but not entirely. Fourteen of the chamber’s 83 Democrats voted against rules suspension while five of the 53 Republicans voted to suspend rules.
House Minority Leader Don Turner (R-Milton), who opposes legalization, said Scott never pressed him to suspend House rules. “He was clear that we had to do what we had to do,” Turner said.
Turner said Wednesday afternoon that House Republicans would meet later in the day to debate whether to suspend rules, but that meeting never happened. He later said that holding another caucus meeting would have pushed the session late into the night and wasn’t worthwhile.
Sears, a marijuana legalization supporter who has watched legislation fail in the House the last two years, said making another try was still worthwhile. The same bill will await lawmakers when they return to Montpelier in January, when suspending the rules won’t be an issue.
“We’ll have something of an agreement with the administration,” he said.
Sears joined with House Judiciary Committee chair Maxine Grad (D-Moretown) to negotiate changes to the vetoed bill with Scott’s staff. At Scott’s request, the new measure would have made it a misdemeanor crime for minors who provide marijuana to other, younger minors. Consuming marijuana with a minor in a car would be a crime as well. The bill also broadened the commission to include more of Scott’s appointees.
The bill’s failure Wednesday means the commission meant to study taxing and regulating marijuana will be delayed from starting its work, Sears noted. An alternative would be for the governor to enact the commission by executive order.
Scott said Wednesday night that he is “contemplating some sort of commission.” If he does create one, it likely would focus first on highway safety issues and youth drug prevention before examining how Vermont might tax and regulate marijuana, he said.
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Gov. Scott is proving to be an exceptionally ineffective leader.
He declines to weigh in on marijuana legislation until almost literally the last minute when it was too late for his input to be considered during the legislature’s regular session. But he encourages the legislature to go back to work on the bill, and engages with them over the last few weeks, and they work hard and come to an agreement on a bill, but all for naught! What was the point of all this if he wasn’t even going to ask Republican leadership (his own party!) to simply vote to suspend the rules so that the bill that HE supports could get passed?
What a waste of time and energy by so many hard working people. This is poor leadership at its finest.
It seems to me that Phil had no genuine interest in getting this passed. Maybe he didn’t expect to see a compromise bill. He certainly didn’t act as if he did.
I imagine Phil will use this episode as evidence that he’s open to legalization. Maybe he’s hoping voters will direct their ire at someone else – now he’ll point to the procedural vote when upset Vermonters ask what happened to legalization.
Phil said he’d ask members of the House to push this through, should a compromise be reached. He didn’t. If Phil wanted to sign a legalization bill this year, he could have.
The Northeast Kingdom is like the rural south. Can we please vote out these repubs and clean the state of this conservative filth?
Face it, Turner is one of those rednecks that think drinking is okay but marijuana is not? Time to get a new house leader!
With the financial interests of government, complicit in every illegal drug issue facing America today, it is difficult not to assume that Phil Scott is under pressure NOT to rock the boat. You cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and until there is a way to compensate those on the losing end of the drug racket, the bill is not going to pass… the Governor and those in the Legislature know this.
It’s time for us, the majority of The People to take back control of our national marijuana policy. By voting OUT of office any and all politicians who very publicly and vocally admit to having an anti-marijuana, prohibitionist agenda! Time to vote’em all OUT of office. Period. Plain and simple.
Politicians who continue to demonize Marijuana, Corrupt Law Enforcement Officials who prefer to ruin peoples lives over Marijuana possession rather than solve real crimes who fund their departments toys and salaries with monies acquired through Marijuana home raids, seizures and forfeitures, and so-called “Addiction Specialists” who make their income off of the judicial misfortunes of our citizens who choose marijuana, – Your actions go against The Will of The People and Your Days In Office Are Numbered! Find new careers before you don’t have one.
The People have spoken! Get on-board with Marijuana Legalization Nationwide, or be left behind and find new careers. Your choice.
Legalize Nationwide!
There *are governments more dysfunctional than the US Govt. Vermont’s. Super-super majority of “liberals” and “progressives” can’t get shit done.There is a vacuum of leadership in Montpelier.
One… ALL drugs are more prevalent in societies who ban them. This includes the United States; despite trillions of dollars spent fighting it, countless lives ruined by it, and the creation of monitized prisons in the land of the free.
Two… Zero people on either side of the legalization debate want our children to get addicted to drugs. In fact, we have enacted laws (not unlike previous laws put in place for alcohol)which are proving yet again to work.
Three… The argument of cannabis being a gateway drug has been proven all over the world and in scientific studies to be a false. If anything is a gateway drug; it would be sugar, caffeine, nicotine in cigarettes, and alcoholic beverages.
Four… Canada and Mexico have legal access to cannabis. Canada will fully legalize in 06/01/2018. Mexico, has already decriminalization and legalized medical use.
Five… The question isn’t IF citizens will continue to consume cannabis or illicit drugs. The question is how do we regulate its use, take profits away from criminal organizations, and how much profit can we make as a society to battle the negative effects caused through Healthcare.
Six… Government can tax me/us. They can even kill us if we are violent or hurt others. Yet I draw the line at government or religious institutions telling me what I can do with my “God given” body (be it good or bad) in the comfort of my own home. And when it comes to who gets to decide my best medical needs, I have the final say so.
Let’s hope this latest hit doesn’t send the stoners running for the medicine cabinet for a few Xanax and Valiums.
Marijuana consumers deserve and demand equal rights and protections under our laws that are currently afforded to the drinkers of far more dangerous and deadly, yet perfectly legal, widely accepted, endlessly advertised and even glorified as an All American pastime, booze.
Plain and simple!
Legalize Marijuana Nationwide!