‘There Are A Lot Of People Who Smoke Cannabis In Congress,’ Lawmaker Says
A sitting member of Congress who helps lead the Congressional Cannabis Caucus made headlines this week with a candid claim: a lot of her colleagues on Capitol Hill secretly use marijuana. The comment, made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) during a public appearance, put a human face on the gap between Washington's official stance on cannabis and the private behavior of the lawmakers who set federal drug policy.
"I think there are a lot of people who smoke cannabis in Congress," Rep. Omar said plainly. She added that federal cannabis legalization remains an important policy issue regardless of whether legislators are personally using the substance, but her comment sparked a wave of media coverage and public conversation about the disconnect between cannabis prohibition and the reality of widespread cannabis use—including among the political class.
An Open Secret on Capitol Hill
Rep. Omar's comment was striking in its directness, but the underlying claim is hardly a bombshell to people who follow Washington closely. Cannabis use among politicians—like cannabis use throughout American society—has been an open secret for decades. Several prominent politicians, including multiple former presidents, have acknowledged past cannabis use. The novelty of Omar's statement is that it implied current, ongoing use among her colleagues, not just youthful experimentation decades past.
The political incentives to stay quiet about cannabis use on Capitol Hill are obvious. Marijuana remains federally illegal, and publicly acknowledging use of a Schedule I substance carries legal and political risks that most lawmakers prefer to avoid. Security clearances can be complicated by drug use history. Constituents in certain districts might react negatively. And for Republicans in particular, cannabis use can conflict with the "tough on crime" and social conservative positions that remain politically important in many parts of the country.
The result is a dynamic that cannabis advocates have long pointed to as evidence of the essential hypocrisy of federal prohibition: lawmakers who privately use or tolerate cannabis vote to maintain federal laws that criminalize it, leaving millions of Americans—disproportionately people of color—to face criminal consequences for the same behavior their elected officials engage in without consequences.
Rep. Omar and Minnesota's Cannabis Advocacy
Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, which includes Minneapolis—the state's largest city and the heart of Minnesota's cannabis industry. She co-chairs the Congressional Cannabis Caucus alongside lawmakers from both parties who believe federal cannabis policy needs fundamental reform.
Minnesota legalized adult-use cannabis in 2023, and Omar has been a consistent voice at the federal level for policies that would bring federal law into alignment with the states—including Minnesota—that have chosen to legalize. She has been a co-sponsor of legislation to deschedule cannabis federally, expunge federal cannabis convictions, and address the banking and tax barriers that continue to hamper cannabis businesses operating legally under state law.
Her willingness to speak openly about cannabis use in Congress reflects a calculated political judgment: the stigma around cannabis has eroded sufficiently that the political cost of candor is lower than it once was, while the political benefit of authenticity and boldness on the issue resonates with her progressive base and with younger voters more broadly.
The Policy Stakes Behind the Personal Observation
Omar was careful to note that the policy case for cannabis legalization doesn't depend on how many members of Congress personally use marijuana. The arguments for federal reform—racial justice, the failure of prohibition, the economic opportunity of legal markets, states' rights, and individual liberty—stand on their own regardless of what lawmakers do in their private lives.
But her comment does underscore a political point that reform advocates have made for years: the political risk of supporting cannabis legalization has diminished dramatically. If a significant number of sitting members of Congress are comfortable using cannabis personally, the institutional resistance to legalization isn't grounded in genuine moral objection—it's a political calculation that is becoming harder to justify as public support for reform continues to grow.
National polling consistently shows 70% or more of Americans supporting adult-use cannabis legalization. That number includes majorities of Republicans, independents, and Democrats. In multiple cycles of state ballot initiatives, cannabis legalization has passed in states with widely varying political cultures, from the reliably liberal Pacific Coast to Montana, Missouri, and South Dakota.
Against that backdrop, the Congressional resistance to federal legalization looks increasingly like institutional inertia rather than a principled stance—which is precisely the point Rep. Omar was making.
What Cannabis Users in Congress Might Mean for Reform
If Omar's characterization is accurate and a meaningful number of members of Congress are personally familiar with cannabis, there's reason to hope that the insider experience might soften institutional resistance to reform over time. Politicians who have used cannabis and found it to be a manageable recreational substance—or a genuinely helpful one for anxiety, sleep, or pain—are presumably less likely to believe the most extreme anti-cannabis rhetoric that has historically dominated federal drug policy debate.
That said, the legislative math on federal cannabis reform remains challenging. While the House has passed cannabis-related legislation in recent sessions—including the MORE Act, which would federally deschedule cannabis—Senate action has been much harder to secure. Legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, a threshold that demands significant bipartisan support that has so far been elusive.
The Trump administration's incremental rescheduling process, moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, has been characterized by some lawmakers and advocates as a half-measure. It would ease some research and tax restrictions but wouldn't fully legalize cannabis or directly address the criminal justice harms of prohibition.
The Minnesota Angle: What Federal Change Would Mean Locally
For Minnesotans who work in or consume cannabis, the federal debate has concrete local implications. Minnesota cannabis dispensaries, including those you'll find in the MN Cannabis Hub directory, currently operate in a legal grey zone: fully licensed under state law, but technically trafficking in a federally illegal substance.
That legal status creates real problems. Banking access remains limited for many cannabis businesses, forcing cash-heavy operations with attendant security risks. Federal tax rules under Section 280E deny cannabis businesses the same deductions available to any other legal business. And any Minnesota cannabis employee with ambitions that require a federal security clearance must navigate complicated disclosure requirements about their work in the industry.
Rep. Omar's candid comments about cannabis in Congress are part of a broader cultural and political shift that is gradually moving federal policy toward a reckoning with cannabis prohibition. For Minnesota's growing cannabis industry and the consumers it serves, that shift can't come soon enough.