Harry Wilmerding on September 21, 2021
Amazon announced Tuesday that it is lobbying the U.S. government to legalize cannabis federally.
“Given our previous support for legalizing cannabis at the federal level, as well as expunging certain criminal records and investing in impacted businesses and communities, Amazon recently announced our support for, and began actively lobbying on, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement act of 2021 (MORE Act),” the company said in a press release. “We are also pleased to endorse the recently introduced Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.”
Both of the bills look to federally legalize weed and remove it from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule 1 drug list, which include LSD and heroin.
Amazon first announced its support for legalized cannabis in June, when it removed marijuana from its drug screening program, according to the release.
“In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use,” the announcement said. “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.”
Part of the reason that Amazon supports the legalization of weed is to make hiring employees easier, according to Tuesday’s press release.
“We’ve found that eliminating pre-employment testing for cannabis allows us to expand our applicant pool,” the press release read.
The company also noted that it highlighted the growing number of states moving to legalize marijuana as well as the data that “indicates that pre-employment marijuana testing disproportionately impacts people of color and acts as a barrier to employment” for its reasoning behind lobbying for cannabis.
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