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Congressional Cannabis Champion Earl Blumenauer Is Going After Anti-Weed Lawmakers
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Rep. Blumenauer is using finances from his recently-funded Cannabis Fund Super PAC to try and oust the country’s pro-prohibition legislators.
Published on October 19, 2017

Lead photo via Oregon Bureau of Land Management

Congressman Earl Blumenauer is putting a fire under the seats of his weed fearing co-workers.

According to a report from Marijuana Moment, instead of simply funneling campaign funds to cannabis-friendly candidates, Blumenauer will instead go after Washington D.C.’s vocal prohibitionists, using finances from the newly created Cannabis Fund Super PAC to directly target legislators standing in the way of federal marijuana reform.

“I’ve been working to try and give you a better Congress,” Blumenauer told the crowd at a National Cannabis Industry Association event in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday night. “One of the other things we are doing is not just helping friends, but to help people who are against us find something else to do with their time.”

For his first act of electoral influence, Blumenauer will seek to spoil the re-election campaign of Pete Sessions (no relation to Jeff), a Texas Republican who was instrumental in blocking the federal cannabis protections of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment from the 2018 Congressional budget.

In addition to his role in opening up the country’s legal weed industry to increased federal prosecution, Sessions has been instrumental in denying the city of Washington D.C. a regulated recreational cannabis industry and blocking veterans from accessing medical marijuana through the Department of Veterans Affairs, a bill that Blumenauer sponsored and publicly championed.

That last move apparently struck a chord with Blumenauer, who plans to use military imagery in a campaign to turn Sessions’ constituents against him.

“We’re going to be putting up some billboards in Pete Sessions’ district. It’s going to feature a veteran and ask the question why Pete Sessions doesn’t want him to have access to his medicine,” Blumenauer told the Portland crowd. “We’re going to make the point that there are consequences. This is not a free vote. People are going to take a position one way or another. And if they are going to be part of an effort to deny people access to medicine that can be transformational… this is going to be part of the political landscape this year.”

With Sessions’ leading Democratic opponent already pulling in money hand-over-fist in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District, Blumenauer said the added pressure piled on by the Cannabis Fund should “make his life interesting.”

Money from the Cannabis Fund Super PAC will also support pro-marijuana political candidates on the federal, state, and local level.

As for who’s next on Blumenauer’s hit list, we can only guess, but keep an eye on Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, home to Rep. Trent Franks, a man who once proposed that nuclear warheads could be smuggled into the country in bales of marijuana, and Maryland’s 1st District, where Rep. Andy Harris is so firm in his anti-cannabis stance that he believes increased research into the drug will prove prohibitionists right.

Want to see if your local Congressperson needs to be replaced with a more 420-friendly Representative? Thanks to NORML, you can take a look at the entire House’s cannabis-related voting history and marijuana opinions here.

Follow Zach Harris on Twitter

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Zach Harris is a writer based in Philadelphia whose work has appeared on Noisey, First We Feast, and Jenkem Magazine. You can find him on Twitter @10000youtubes complaining about NBA referees.
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