The House Judiciary Committee voted this week on a bill that would deschedule cannabis, expunge marijuana convictions, and create reinvestment programs in communities most impacted by the war on drugs.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) ACT was introduced by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). The Judiciary Committee voted 24-10 to approve the bill and send it to the full House floor for a vote. So far, the bill has 55 co-sponsors.

This will remove a stain on people’s record but really a stain on the United States of America,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN).

Some key elements of the MORE Act include:

“Our marijuana laws disproportionately harm individuals and communities of color, leading to convictions that damage job prospects, access to housing, and the ability to vote,” Nadler said in a press release. “Recognizing this, many states have legalized marijuana. It’s now time for us to remove the criminal prohibitions against marijuana at the federal level. That’s why I introduced the MORE Act, legislation which would assist communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of these laws.”

Additionally, removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act would allow veterans access to medical marijuana through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

While the bill is likely to pass in the House, its future is less certain in the Senate.

“The Senate will take its own time, but then the Senate always does,” said Nadler. “The energy and the political pressure from the various states is growing rapidly. The Senate is subject to that, too. We’ll accomplish this.”

The House Education & Labor Committee approved a bill that would repeal a law that prevents students with drug convictions from receiving financial aid. Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) sponsored the Financial Aid Fairness for Students Act with over 30 co-sponsors.

In 1998, Congress amended the Higher Education Act by adding the Aid Elimination Penalty (AEP), cutting off students with drug convictions from receiving federal financial aid.

As a result of the change, a question about past drug convictions was added to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Students looking for help paying for college must fill out a FAFSA to be eligible for loans, grants, and work-study programs. After the drug offense question was added to the form, more than 41,000 students were denied financial aid each year, not including students who didn’t bother applying because of marijuana or other drug offenses.

“The best possible intervention for a young person struggling in their relationship with drugs is a quality education,” Betty Aldworth, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), said in an interview with Forbes. “Evidence demonstrates that denying them access only harms the students and their communities.

In 2006, Congress amended the AEP to only cut off financial to students convicted of drug offenses while receiving aid. Students convicted for possession are denied aid for one year for the first offense, two years for the second offense, and permanently for the third offense. Students convicted for selling are denied aid for two years for the first offense, and indefinitely if there is another offense.

The change to the AEP rules reduced the number of rejected applications to about 1,000 per year, though the question about past drug convictions is still on the FAFSA application.

If the Financial Aid Fairness for Students bill is approved by Congress, it would remove the question about past drug convictions from the FAFSA entirely.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), a co-sponsor of the bill, said, “This policy unfairly targets poor and minority students and costs society more in terms of crime and lost economic productivity.”

Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU’s Drug Law Reform Project, says punishing students for drug offenses is discriminatory and furthers inequality. “If a student is convicted of a drug offense and her family can afford to pay for college, she will be unaffected by the legislation, while those who are already in danger of being forced to society’s margins will be further disempowered,” he said.

Aldworth says that denying financial aid to students convicted with marijuana or other low-level drug offenses is part of a larger problem. “Young people of color are disproportionately impacted by these policies just as people of color are disproportionately targeted for enforcement of drug laws in general,” Aldworth said. “This is one part of a massive system of systemic discrimination against communities, with collateral consequences that reach far beyond a single person’s education.”

This week the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released draft rules for hemp regulation. There will be a 60-day public comment period before the rules are finalized.

“At USDA, we are always excited when there are new economic opportunities for our farmers, and we hope the ability to grow hemp will pave the way for new products and markets,” said Secretary Perdue in a press release. “We have had teams operating with all-hands-on-deck to develop a regulatory framework that meets Congressional intent while seeking to provide a fair, consistent, and science-based process for states, tribes, and individual producers who want to participate in this program.”

The USDA drafted the regulations as a result of the 2018 Farm Bill that descheduled and legalized hemp. Under the draft rules, the THC content must be under 0.3%, and any hemp found to exceed that amount would be destroyed. Other key elements of the new regulations include:

States and American Indian tribes will have some say in setting their own hemp regulations (as long as they don’t violate USDA guidelines), and the USDA must evaluate these plans within 60 days of submission. In states where hemp production is illegal, such as South Dakota, farmers will not be able to cultivate hemp unless state law changes.

Not everyone is happy with the proposed rules. Hemp farmers say that the USDA regulations will make producing high-quality CBD impossible.

“We’re going to be forced, if we want to continue farming CBD, to be harvesting in week four to week six of flower time, where we’re typically not starting our harvest until seven or eight,” Phoenix-based hemp farmer Adam Harris told KTVL News10.

Hemp farmers say that the window between testing, receiving results, and harvesting is too narrow and will hurt the quality of their harvest.

“Most scientific research to date is indicating that the most medicinal benefits are with that full-spectrum CBD. These new USDA regulations make it so we can’t even take in the harvested material to take in those full-spectrum extracts the way that we have been,” said Mitra Sticklen of Om Farms LLC, a hemp company based in Jacksonville.