By Benjie Cooper
IG: @nuglifenews
YouTube: Lucid’s Vlog
During a crowded meeting on September 15, Texas Cannabis Industry Association (TCIA) founding board member Patrick Moran called out Congressman Pete Sessions [R-TX] for blocking every piece of cannabis reform legislation that has come his way.
Sessions is Chairman of the House Rules Committee and has shot down 35 cannabis reform bills in Congress since 2016.
But why Sessions has prevented marijuana policy reform in the United States so aggressively is not entirely clear, though Moran believes he knows the reason.
“Old-fashioned bigotry,” said Moran during the meeting, noting that the American Civil Rights Union gave Sessions a 7% rating in 2002. “Despite roughly equal usage rates, blacks are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana.”
Citing Sessions’ opposition to the 14th Amendment which grants birthright citizenship, Moran says that the Congressman goes against everything that Abraham Lincoln fought for in the Civil War, noting that the position aligns him with that of the failed Confederacy.
But according to Moran, since Sessions took office since 2013, he hasn’t had a feasible challenger to unseat him from his position, until now. Former Tennessee Titans linebacker Colin Allred has gained the Democratic nomination and will be challenging Sessions for his seat in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District in the November election.
Allred has made cannabis reform an integral part of his platform.
“Colin Allred is the first viable challenger Sessions has had in several election cycles,” said Moran. “I’m as guilty as anyone that we’ve let this evil gain power in our own backyard.”
At one point during the meeting, Moran also called on people to hold Senator Ted Cruz to a yet-unfulfilled promise that he made to sign on to the STATES Act, a 10th Amendment Constitutional article introduced by Corey Booker [R-CO] and Elizabeth Warren [D-MA] to protect states who legalize from federal interference.
Moran states that Cruz had even made the promise to some of the people attending the meeting.
According to a TCIA press release, their membership is bipartisan with an almost equal split between Republican and Democrat members with a small portion of Libertarians.
