Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
20 April 18
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Sanders is the latest senator to sign on to a bill that would remove
marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and punish states that
continue criminalizing weed.
Several potential 2020 presidential contenders in the Senate are now co-sponsors of the Marijuana Justice Act,
a weed-decriminalization bill first drafted by Democratic Senator Cory
Booker, of New Jersey, in August 2017. Senator Sanders, the Independent
from Vermont, signed his name as a co-sponsor Thursday, joining Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat, who political pundits say might be considering her own chase for the Democratic nomination for president along with Booker and Sanders.
"Leaders in the Democratic Party are increasingly
recognizing that leading the charge on legalization is not only good
policy, but good politics," Justin Strekal, political director of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML, said in a
press release Thursday. "The constituencies which the party claims to
stand for are the ones who have most felt the weight of prohibition and
the lifelong consequences of prohibition."
The Marijuana Justice Act takes several major actions
to decriminalize marijuana at both the state and federal levels. First,
the proposed bill’s removal of weed from the 1970 Controlled Substances
Act would allow individual states to legalize the drug, currently listed
as a Schedule I illegal narcotic alongside cocaine, heroin and LSD.
Second, the bill would hold federal funding from states that continue to
criminalize marijuana and inordinately prosecute minorities. Last, the
bill creates a Treasury federal fund that could be used for projects to
reinvest and rebuild low-income communities through the Department of
Housing and Urban Development.
Sanders has repeatedly criticized marijuana
criminalization for targeting minority communities, a sentiment echoed
by Gillibrand. In a February Facebook Live video announcing her support
for the bill, Gillibrand noted that despite marijuana usage being almost
identical across racial lines, African-Americans and other minorities
are far more statistically likely to be arrested and convicted for
weed-related crimes.
“The way our criminal justice system is working is so harmful, and so biased,” said Gillibrand.
Sanders has also paralleled his support for the
decriminalization of marijuana on the federal level with his support of
weed potentially helping to reduce the country’s opioid addiction
epidemic.
"What we are seeing in an ahistorical manner is life
expectancy is actually going down because of the number of deaths
attributed to opioid addiction among other factors," Sanders said in a
recent CNN interview. “We are seeing in virtually every state in this
country people’s lives are being wrecked, we’re talking about hundreds
of thousands of people’s lives.”
NORML's Strekal added in a statement, “With Senator
Sanders cosponsoring the Marijuana Justice Act alongside Senators Booker
and Gillibrand, it’s time for the party to speak with one voice that
they will legalize marijuana and expunge the criminal convictions of the
millions who are being held back from achieving both employment and the
American dream."
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is also a cosponsor of the
S.1689 Marijuana Justice Act of 2017 bill. Sanders is the first
non-Democrat to place his support behind the legislation.
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