By Benjie Cooper
IG: @nuglifenews
YouTube: Lucid’s Vlog
What started as a trickle of cannabis legalization through a few cracks in the global prohibition dam years ago has now given way to a rapidly crumbling patchwork of countries that still cling to marijuana criminalization based on loyalty to obsolete ideology founded in mistruth.
While people continue to unlearn the anti-cannabis propaganda that has been taught to the masses over the last century, and marijuana’s benefits continue to be revealed through modern research, laws begin to change as their inappropriateness is realized.
While Canada is readying for legal marijuana sales nationwide, and medicinal cannabis is getting a scheduling change in the United Kingdom, a United States territory is taking legislative steps toward marijuana legalization.
In May, the Senate of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) voted to pass legislation to legalize the cultivation, possession, and consumption of cannabis for adults over the age of twenty-one. The measure also designated that tax revenue generated from retail cannabis sales would be used to fund the program as well as other government functions.
As of a 2010 census, there were close to 54,000 people living in the CNMI.
But the bill was unable to advance due to the fact that revenue-generating bills are required to originate in the House of Representatives. This week, the House voted 18 to 1 with one abstention to pass a measure similar to the first one drafted by the Senate.
As the bill moves into the CNMI Senate, it is likely to pass considering the high support that the original legislation had there.
Pending the measure’s passage in the full legislature, a signature by Governor Ralph Torres is not guaranteed as he has expressed concerns about crime rates, public safety, and other related issues in a legal cannabis environment.
