The House Republicans have approved legislation that would require President Barak Obama to crack down on states that have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use. The Enforce the Law Act was passed on Wednesday allowing Congress to sue the president for “failing to faithfully execute laws.”
“The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to write the laws and the Executive to enforce them,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said Wednesday in a statement. “We don’t pass suggestions. We don’t pass ideas. We pass laws. Regardless of our politics, I hope my colleagues have enough regard for our work to expect those laws would be faithfully executed.”
Washington and Colorado have both made the drug legal, however, Federal Law considers the sale and possession of marijuana a crime. Republicans said in their report that not enforcing federal drug laws “in entire states is not a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
“Rather, the guidance to U.S. Attorneys establishes a formal, department-wide policy of selective non-enforcement of an Act of Congress. This infringes on Congress’s lawmaking authority by, in effect, amending the flat prohibitions of the [Controlled Substances Act] to permit the possession, distribution, and cultivation of marijuana so long as that conduct is in compliance with state law. This crosses the line between permissible discretionary decisions made by prosecutors on a case-by-case basis and an impermissible suspension of the law by executive fiat,” the report added.