The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, which passed 220-204, is unlikely to secure 60 votes to pass the Senate, despite the backing of the majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.
The Democrats’ bill would remove marijuana from the federal government’s list of controlled substances, impose an 8 percent tax on cannabis products, allow some convictions on cannabis charges to be expunged and press for sentencing reviews at the federal and state levels.
“I’m respecting the process that the Democrats want to go through,” said Ms. Mace, who has made marijuana decriminalization a central issue but voted against the Democratic bill.
By lowering law enforcement and incarceration costs and imposing new taxation, the bill would save the government hundreds of millions of dollars.
Similar legislation passed in 2020 but went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Ms. Mace, backed by four other Republicans, has her own bill, with a lower tax rate to discourage an illicit cannabis trade and other measures to discourage youth consumption.
With 47 states and the District of Columbia having relaxed marijuana laws in some way, the federal government is far behind.
Sales in that industry totaled $20 billion in 2020 and are projected to more than double by 2025, according to the bill.
Even as states move forward with legalization, people convicted on marijuana offenses — disproportionately people of color — remain imprisoned.
During the debate on Friday, House Republicans raised concerns that the bill would expose more children to cannabis and that it ignored mental health issues in adult users.
“The left will not let the Democrats do what needs to be done with the inflation problem, the energy problem, the illegal immigration problem on the southern border,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee.
Ms. Mace said the Democrats with whom she had been negotiating needed to pass their version of a legalization bill before getting serious about talks on a bipartisan bill, with buy-in from the Senate.
“I hope that I can be forgiven for voting against it,” Ms. Mace said on Friday, before casting her vote against the Democrats’ bill.