By Dana Rohrabacher Imagine that you recently purchased the home of your dreams. You worked, saved and sacrificed for years and finally reached the point where you could buy a house. You move in, excited about the start of your new life, and settle happily into your routine. Shortly thereafter, the house next door to you sells and a group of people moves in. You start to notice things, like the number of people living there and the corresponding lack of parking. You see that individuals are constantly moving in and out of the house sometimes only for weeks or even days at a time. Then, among other things, you notice an increase in police activity on your block and around your home, and become concerned about the character of the neighborhood in which you chose to live with your family. You call your local city council and report your concerns, and you're told you may live next to a "sober living home." They wish they could help, but their lawyers have already told them their hands are tied. This is an illustration akin to the experience of many homeowners throughout Orange County and other communities throughout our country. Sober living homes are single-family residences that supposedly provide a clean and safe living environment for individuals recovering from alcohol or drug addictions. In truth, they are businesses operated by outside entities, many of which are the scourge of the surrounding neighborhood and a false refuge for the addicted. The facilities lack oversight, enforceable best practice standards and are largely unlicensed because of federal law that designates recovering drug and alcohol addicts as "disabled." States and local governments have been consistently rebuked by courts who say laws and ordinances that target these facilities discriminate against this class of people. Meanwhile, the facilities owned and operated by unscrupulous individuals laugh all the way to the bank with profits from a permanent, lucrative business funded by insurance company money in residential communities without accountability. Add to that the harm inflicted on addicts. The operators of the facilities are shielding themselves with protections meant for their customers while the addicts may live in horrible conditions and don't receive the care they are promised. The Government Accountability Office documented a significant amount of fraud committed by the operators of these facilities in several states while noting that studying the issue is difficult because of incomplete data. Most of these homes are unlicensed and thus their true number is unknown. The presence of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics next door in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is that many of these individuals relapse, transforming the homes into transient motels that shelter these individuals for only weeks, if not days, at a time. After which they often end up on the streets, weakening their prospect for recovery and further exacerbating the growing problem of homelessness in our county. Local government should have the right to address these concerns, but federal and state laws prevent them from doing so. Housing is expensive and American families sacrifice a great deal when they purchase their home. They deserve the right to safeguard the character of their communities and local governments must be able to protect them from unscrupulous owners, operators, and inhabitants of sober living homes when those individuals disregard the well-being and wishes of the surrounding neighborhood. Addicts who are legitimately trying to recover deserve to receive the care they earnestly seek in licensed facilities that exist in a location with the consent of local communities. That is why I authored and introduced House Resolution 5724, the Restoring Community Oversight of Sober Living Homes Act of 2018. This legislation, if enacted, would narrowly amend the Fair Housing Act to define "recovery facility" in federal law. Recovering addicts with traditional landlord-tenant arrangements would not be affected by my legislation. The bill would also repeal "substance use disorder" from the list of essential health benefits that were enacted in the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which will allow states and insurance companies another avenue by which to tackle the fraud being committed by so many operators of the facilities. Congress is becoming increasingly aware of these problems, and I am happy to announce that the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice plans to conduct a public hearing on the issue on Sept. 14. Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tempore Erik Peterson and I, among others, will testify at this hearing to highlight this serious problem for our communities. We must implement a balanced approach. We applaud those who seek to defeat their addictions and cheer them on in their battle for sobriety. Let us ensure they are in a safe environment that is suitable to their recovery. We respect the rights of homeowners, who broadly sympathize with the addicts, to live in a community that is safe for their families and retains the character it had when they purchased their home.

By Dana Rohrabacher Not long ago, a supporter of mine, visiting from California, dropped by my Capitol office. A retired military officer and staunch conservative, he and I spent much of our conversation discussing the Republican agenda. Finally, I drew a breath and asked him about an issue I feared might divide us: the liberalization of our marijuana laws, specifically medical marijuana reform, on which for years I had been leading the charge. What did he think about that controversial position? "Dana," he replied, "there are some things about me you don't know." He told me about his three sons, all of whom enlisted after 9/11. Two of his sons returned from the battlefield whole and healthy. The third, however, came home suffering multiple seizures each day. His prospects were bleak. His medical care fell under the total guidance of the Department of Veterans Affairs, whose doctors came under federal restraints regarding the treatments they could prescribe. (Among the treatments allowed were opioids.) Nothing worked. Finally, a sympathetic doctor advised our young hero to see him in his private office, where he could prescribe medication derived from cannabis. The prescription worked. The seizures, for the most part, ceased. "Dana," said my friend, "I could hug you right now for what you've been doing, unknowingly, for my son." What had I been doing? With my Democrat friend Sam Farr, the now-retired California congressman, I wrote an amendment to spending bills that prohibits the federal government from prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states where voters have legalized such treatment. The amendment passed two consecutive years, the second time with a wider margin than the first, and has been extended through continuing resolutions and an omnibus spending bill. Surprisingly, given the Obama administration's generally liberal approach to marijuana, its Justice Department tried to interpret the amendment in such a convoluted way as to allow counterproductive raids on marijuana dispensaries. The courts -- most recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit -- repeatedly ruled that our amendment meant exactly what it said. Unfortunately, my longtime friend Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, has urged Congress to drop the amendment, now co-sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). This, despite President Trump's belief, made clear in his campaign and as president, that states alone should decide medical marijuana policies. I should not need to remind our chief law enforcement officer nor my fellow Republicans that our system of federalism, also known as states' rights, was designed to resolve just such a fractious issue. Our party still bears a blemish for wielding the "states' rights" cudgel against civil rights. If we bury state autonomy in order to deny patients an alternative to opioids, and ominously federalize our police, our hypocrisy will deserve the American people's contempt. More than half the states have liberalized medical marijuana laws, some even decriminalizing recreational use. Some eighty percent of Americans favor legalization of medical marijuana. Only a benighted or mean-spirited mind-set would want to block such progress. Despite federal efforts to restrict supply, studies continue to yield promising results. And mounting anecdotal evidence shows again and again that medical marijuana can dramatically improve the lives of people with epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder, arthritis and many other ailments. Most Americans know this. The political class, not surprisingly, lags behind them. Part of the reason is the failure of too many conservatives to apply "public choice economics" to the war on marijuana. Common sense, as well as public choice theory, holds that the government's interest is to grow, just as private-sector players seek profit and build market share. The drug-war apparatus will not give ground without a fight, even if it deprives Americans of medical alternatives and inadvertently creates more dependency on opioids. When its existence depends on asset seizures and other affronts to our Constitution, why should anti-medical-marijuana forces care if they've contributed inadvertently to a vast market, both legal and illegal, for opioids? I invite my colleagues to visit a medical marijuana research facility and see for themselves why their cultural distaste might be misplaced. One exists near my district office at the University of California at Irvine, another at the University of California at San Diego. Better yet, they might travel to Israel -- that political guiding light for religious conservatives -- and learn how our closest ally in the Middle East has positioned itself on the cutting edge of cannabis research. The Israeli government recently decriminalized first use, so unworried it is about what marijuana might do to its conscript military. My colleagues should then return to Washington and keep my amendment intact, declaring themselves firmly on the side of medical progress. Failing that, the government will keep trying to eradicate the burgeoning marijuana business, thereby fueling and enriching drug cartels. Trust me: Hugs from grateful supporters are infinitely better.

By Dana Rohrabacher My old boss, Ronald Reagan, used to advise us speechwriters that our advocacy should be easily understood by the guy pumping our gas while listening to his radio. Most Americans now pump their own gas. Still, Reagan's commonsense guidance holds. People in the communications business from ad writers to journalists understand when they're told to KISS -- the old "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule. Of course, their job is describing policy, not making it. These days, how you describe policy can be as significant as what you believe your policy should be. That is especially true when it comes to health care reform. Former GOP senator: Resist the bullying. Don't vote for a mystery health care bill.Senate Republican leaders don't seem to agree on a replacement of Obamacare. The bill passed by the House, for which I voted, lacks what we might call promotability. For average voters, that means a lack of understandability. The Democrats are ready to convince our supporters that our attempted reform will worsen their plight. Here's a simple prediction: If my Republican colleagues can't come up with and pass an understandable reform package, we lose. If the public is presented with complicated funding models that make sense on Capitol Hill but not on Main Street, we lose. So it is time to get back to basics and keep it simple. We should not lose sight of the fundamental premise driving health care reform: the unwillingness of the American people to accept that people with pre-existing conditions will go untreated because they have been priced out of the insurance market. Sick and infirm Americans with pre-existing conditions will not be left to fend for themselves because of denied insurance coverage, period. However we meet this challenge, the reality is that the American people will pay for this benefit one way or the other. Neither the insurance companies nor state governments -- many of them already near bankruptcy -- will pick up the tab for the American people. It ain't gonna happen. It's going to be taken out of the pockets of all of us. So if we the people are going to pay for it, the plan needs America's confidence. They need a KISS solution, and they need it quickly. Here's mine: The federal government would establish procedures to verify all our fellow Americans' pre-existing conditions.The cost of treating those pre-existing conditions -- and only those conditions -- will be borne by Medicare.Those who receive Medicare coverage for their pre-existing conditions would be required to maintain private insurance to cover the cost of their remaining health care needs.Obviously, any reform package will contain more elements than this one, but this could be the centerpiece of a broader piece of legislation. If Republicans can think beyond standard legislative Of course, my KISS proposal would increase the Medicare budget, which would be covered by direct replenishment from general revenues. But once pre-existing conditions are taken care of, millions of people now frozen out of the insurance market will take care of all their other health needs through private insurance -- from which they are now excluded. These millions of new insurance customers will dramatically pull down the costs for everyone. Medicare already enjoys the trust of the American people. They will understand this and support it. They might even KISS us back.