Sanders To Propose Marijuana Legalization

Bernie Sanders would remove marijuana from the most risky federal drug category if elected president, the Democratic candidate plans to announce on Wednesday. “States should have the right to regulate marijuana the same way they do alcohol and tobacco”.

“Too many Americans have seen their lives destroyed because they have a criminal record as a result of marijuana use”, Sanders said in prepared remarks for the event. “That has got to change”, Sanders said in a speech at George Mason University, citing a recent Federal Bureau of Investigation report that noted someone is arrested on marijuana charges every minute in United States.

Sanders would be the first presidential candidate to advocate the removal of marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Schedule I list of controlled substances, which also includes heroin, LSD and MDMA.

“As states around the country pass reforms to scale back the role of criminalization in marijuana policy, Virginia appears to be moving in the wrong direction”, said Lindsey Lawson Battaglia, policy manager with the Drug Policy Alliance and former Virginia criminal defense attorney. We have large numbers of lives that have been destroyed because of this war on drugs, and because people were caught smoking marijuana and so forth.

“There is a racial component to this situation”, Sanders said.

Sanders was quick to say he wasn’t calling on states to legalize marijuana in the way Colorado and a few others have, but he said the federal government should no longer stand in the way of legalization through bans on marijuana dispensaries using the banking system, for example. And we’re spending about $80 billion a year to lock people up.

“In 2014… there were 620,000 arrests for marijuana possession”.

Martin O’Malley has said he would like to see marijuana reassigned to the less restrictive Schedule II. “We need major changes in our criminal justice system – including changes in drug laws”.

Sanders’ main rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton, has expressed support for decriminalizing marijuana and allowing access to it for medical purposes, but she’s shied away from taking a stance on full-fledged legalization.

Disparities like these have provided much of the momentum for marijuana reform in other localities, most notably DC’s successful drive to legalize marijuana a year ago. “I think we’re just at the beginning, but I agree completely with the idea that we have got to stop imprisoning people who use marijuana”, she said at the first Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas.