The push to legalize cannabis on a national level just got a powerful ally.
Amazon says its public policy team will actively support legislation to legalize marijuana at the federal level and expunge all criminal records associated with it.
In a blog post, CEO Dave Clark committed to backing the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act) and said Amazon would no longer screen potential workers for usage of the drug.
“In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use,” he said. “However, given where state laws are moving across the U.S., we’ve changed course. 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.”
The MORE act was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives last month. It proposes making recreational marijuana use legal in the United States on a federal (rather than state) level, and releasing people who were jailed on nonviolent marijuana-related offenses.
At present, 16 states and the District of Columbia have fully legalized weed. Several others have decriminalized it.
During the pandemic, marijuana sales skyrocketed and on 4/20, the favorite holiday of weed enthusiasts, sales were expected to cross $95 million.
“Americans purchased $18.3 billion in cannabis products over the past calendar year, $7.6 billion more than the $10.7 billion in sales the previous year,” the cannabis-focused group Leafly wrote in an April report.