While a Republican congressman supports reversing some criminal justice reform policies implemented by local officials, in the nation’s capital, it does not deny that there is “a trace racism” in marijuana enforcement. He believes that the advocates who want to reduce harsh punishment laws have gone overboard.
James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, spoke to Washington, D.C. lawmakers and officials during a hearing last week. He discussed efforts that his committee is leading in Congress to reform multiple local laws. The District would be restricted from implementing sentencing reforms under one of the bills.
“Now, when criminal justice reform first came to Kentucky I was a supporter. Another Republican also did. [Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)] “At that time,” Comer stated. It dealt with the incarceration of young people for marijuana possession.
Marijuana is legal now in the majority of states. I believed and still do that it was a harsh penalty. It did seem to me that, by numbers, there was a hint of racism,” he added, adding Black youth seemed to be disproportionately affected by criminalization.
“But with time the activists expanded that, and they did so to include no bail or cashless bail. To raise the age for what constitutes a juvenile, and treat them as if it was a minor crime, they would give them a simple slap of the wrist. The congressman explained that this is why he intervened.
It comes just weeks after Comer’s Committee approved a measure to repeal D.C. laws expanding expungements of marijuana possession.
A Democratic Congresswoman accused Rep. Byron Donalds, R-FL of hypocrisy after he sponsored the bill when his charge for possession of marijuana in his youth had been dismissed by a judge’s discretion.
Second Chance Amendment Act (a District law adopted in 2022, which took effect immediately) contains the cannabis expungement policies.
Under the law, the District’s judiciary was mandated to automatically expunge marijuana possession records for offenses that took place before D.C. enacted a limited cannabis legalization law in 2014.
Advocates have already been frustrated with congressional interference with the District’s cannabis laws—particularly the annual renewal of an appropriations rider from Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) barring D.C. from using its local tax dollars to implement a system of regulated recreational marijuana sales.
Comer was in charge of voting on repealing the law, but he had indicated previously that he might be open to revisiting this rider. Asked about the possibility of lifting restrictions on D.C. legal cannabis sales, he said in late 2023 “if that’s what Washington D.C. wants, yeah.”
Earlier this month, the House Appropriations Committee again advanced the underlying spending bill with the rider kept intact.
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Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton has accused appropriators of putting forth a bill restricting the District of Columbia’s autonomy. The rider “prohibits the use of funding to commercialize marijuana for recreational purposes” is one of those restrictions.
Norton expressed his outrage at the “number and extent of anti D.C. home-rule riders” in the legislation released in today’s release. The measure had cleared the subcommittee back in July.
The congresswoman said in May that she would again again push her colleagues to join her in an effort to remove the cannabis language.
“As Congress works on the fiscal year 2026 appropriation bill, I will continue to fight to remove this rider,” she said, while referencing a statement from the White House that called the District’s move to enact local marijuana reform an example of a “failed” policy that “opened the door to disorder.”
President Donald Trump’s budget request that he released in June similarly contained the Harris rider preventing marijuana sales in D.C., despite voters in the jurisdiction voting to approve legalization in 2014. In his tenure as president, former President Joe Biden repeatedly asked for the continuation of D.C. Cannabis rider.
As a temporary solution, D.C. officials expanded the existing medical marijuana program in the city.
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