A senior adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recently reiterated that, if elected, his administration would pursue decriminalizing marijuana and automatically expunging prior cannabis convictions.
Symone Sanders discussed the campaign’s criminal justice agenda during an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, emphasizing that Biden and his vice presidential running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will prioritize the modest drug policy reform proposals.
The administration will make sure “we’re really reforming the criminal justice system so we’re preventing things on the front end,” Sanders said. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t believe anyone should be in jail for drug offenses only. They believe that marijuana should be decriminalized and folks with marijuana convictions should have those automatically expunged.”
While this is not a departure from the campaign’s established drug policy platform, it’s another sign that cannabis reform is playing an increased role this election cycle.
Sanders, who formerly served as the national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during his 2016 presidential run, was a member of a Biden-Sanders criminal justice task force that convened earlier this year and issued various recommendations on policies they feel should be adopted.