The House will vote in favor of lifting the federal ban on marijuana within a few weeks, the president said.

The chairman of a critical committee of the House said Wednesday that his panel and the entire committee will pass a bill to protect states with legal marijuana from any federal intervention "within a relatively short period of time. in short, in the coming weeks, and I think we will have a very strong vote. "

"We will be leading the debate in the House for a vote that I believe will be passed by an overwhelming vote: Democrats and many Republicans," said Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA), whose Rules Committee decided the way the legislation is dealt with in the chamber. "If we have a strong bipartite vote, it will increase pressure on the Senate to do something about it."

In his interview with Boston Herald Radio, McGovern said he was unaware of President Trump's stance on cannabis.

"I hope he's going to sign what the House and Senate have put together, but I'm confident he'll get a bill," he said.

McGovern was responding to a question about the State Tenth Amendment Amendment Act (STATES), tabled by his colleague Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last year with Senator Cory Gardner (R- CO). The bill, which Trump said support "actually," died at the end of the last congress and has not yet been officially re-presented this year. The bill would exempt legal marijuana activities from the federal Controlled Substances Act.

"Whether it's the Warren-Gardner bill or any other configuration, I'm expecting something to happen this year," McGovern said.

Listen to McGovern's comments on marijuana at 3:30 pm in the audio clip below:

McGovern also pointed out how his Republican predecessor at the head of the key committee had a different perspective on marijuana.

"Former Chair of the Rules Committee [Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)] blocked everything related to cannabis. We are in a new day, "he said. "We have to make sure that our federal laws do not interfere with what the states do, especially with respect to the banking issues, where everything is now in cash and that's not the way we want it to happen. . We must ensure that federal laws respect what states do. "

Sessions lost their candidacy for the mid-term elections in November and Democrats won a majority in the House.

Now that he and his party are leading the House, McGovern is optimistic about the prospects for marijuana reform.

"It will happen, and I am really convinced that we will adopt it in the House and I think there is also bipartisan support in the Senate," he said.

In addition to the Rules Committee, several other groups are expected to vote on cannabis legislation in the near future.

The House Financial Services Committee, for example, is scheduled to vote on a bill on marijuana banks on Wednesday.

In this regard, McGovern said that "does not seem to be safe or reasonable, forcing marijuana companies to use cash, which can make them criminal targets. He said members of Congress "do not always deal with reality", which is why he has been slow to adopt legislation such as the Banking Act.

"My predecessor on the Rules Committee, I think, had a moral objection to that and would not want any amendments to come to the House to deal with this problem," he said. "And I know the former Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions was very opposed to any legislation that would allow the federal government to comply with state laws because it had just that – I do not even know exactly what the objection was, but it was simply opposed. "

Representative of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), said in January that his panel would likely vote on cannabis reform "soon enough".

In his radio interview, McGovern also explained that there was "always a queue of people" waiting for a marijuana retailer near his district office.

In addition to the previous blockade of cannabis legislation by his GOP counterpart, the Democratic congressman argued that marijuana was not a partisan issue.

"I think what we're seeing here is that the states that advance the issue of marijuana are not just blue democratic states, they're also Republican states," McGovern said. "You have Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans, and everyone in the world understands that it makes sense to update our laws."

"I think the consensus is that the status quo is unacceptable," he said.

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