Big Tech Company Announces It Plans to Lobby US Government for Marijuana Legalization
Amazon announced Tuesday that it is lobbying the U.S. government to legalize cannabis federally.
“Given our previous support for legalizing cannabis at the federal level, as well as expunging certain criminal records and investing in impacted businesses and communities, Amazon recently announced our support for, and began actively lobbying on, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement act of 2021 (MORE Act),” the company said in a news release.
“We are also pleased to endorse the recently introduced Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act,” it said.
Both of the bills look to federally legalize weed and remove it from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule 1 drug list, which includes LSD and heroin.
Amazon is lobbying the US government to make pot legal https://t.co/VDvBNlMYw2
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) September 21, 2021
Amazon first announced its support for legalized cannabis in June, when it removed marijuana from its drug screening program, according to the release.
“In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use,” the announcement said.
“We will no longer include marijuana in our comprehensive drug screening program for any positions not regulated by the Department of Transportation, and will instead treat it the same as alcohol use.”
Part of the reason that Amazon supports the legalization of weed is to make hiring employees easier, the company said in Tuesday’s news release.
“We’ve found that eliminating pre-employment testing for cannabis allows us to expand our applicant pool,” the release read.
Amazon also highlighted the growing number of states moving to legalize marijuana as well as the data that it said “indicates that pre-employment marijuana testing disproportionately impacts people of color and acts as a barrier to employment” as reasons it is lobbying for cannabis legalization.
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