New GOP Congressional Bills Would Block Use Of Federal Welfare Funds At Marijuana Dispensaries

A newly filed pair of GOP-led congressional bills would prevent people from using federal financial assistance at marijuana dispensaries.

As part of a broader piece of legislation from Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) that aims to change rules around welfare requirements, there are provisions that mirror a standalone measure introduced in prior sessions called the “Welfare For Needs Not Weed Act.”

The provision in the new Jobs and Opportunity with Benefits and Services (JOBS) for Success Act represents the latest in a series of attempts over recent sessions to block low-income individuals from accessing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds at cannabis businesses.

According to a memo on an earlier version of the measure, it would prohibit people “from using welfare benefit cards for purchases at stores that sell marijuana, as well as forbids the withdrawal of welfare cash at ATMs in such stores.”

The title of the section itself—”Welfare For Needs Not Weed”—has on its own drawn the ire of legalization advocates who argue it unnecessarily plays into negative cannabis stereotypes. They also argue that it’s inappropriate to tell medical cannabis patients they can’t use funds for their medicine.

Text of the relevant section of the legislation is short, simply adding “any establishment that offers marihuana… for sale” to the list of places where TANF funds on electronic benefit transfer cards couldn’t be used.

The legislation’s Republican sponsors have described the bill broadly as a set of “common-sense reforms to reauthorize, modernize, and reform” the TANF program.

“Nobody wants to depend on the government’s help, and this bill is a crucial step in modernizing the TANF program to ensure that we’re helping families escape the cycle of poverty and equipping them for self-sufficiency,” Daines, who has sponsored bipartisan legislation to allow marijuana businesses to access banking services, said in a press release last week. “By promoting work ethic and responsibility, we can cut straight to the root causes of economic disadvantage and child poverty, and our families will be far better off.”

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Relatedly, in February Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) peddled a stigmatizing message to justify a separate bill on adding work requirements for certain federal benefits, implying that it’s necessary to prevent people from buying marijuana with taxpayer dollars and lazing around on the couch while eating Cheetos.

Daines, for his part, also included language in an earlier welfare-related bill in 2021 that would have made it so people could not use TANF funds at marijuana dispensaries.

In 2018, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a prior version of the legislation as part of a broader jobs bill, but it was not enacted into law.

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