Sen. Bernie Sanders is happy that legal marijuana sales are coming to his home state.
“Let me congratulate the state legislature for making Vermont the 11th state in the country to legalize marijuana and also for expunging past marijuana convictions,” the former Democratic presidential candidate posted on Twitter on Friday.
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) announced this week that he would allow a bill to legalize cannabis sales to become law without his signature, while he signed separate legislation to facilitate the expungement of past marijuana convictions.
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.
Two members of a criminal justice task force organized by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and former rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently discussed why they feel the criminalization of marijuana is an untenable policy, with one—a former U.S. attorney general—suggesting that even drugs such as opioids and cocaine should be removed from the criminal justice system’s purview.
Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have announced plans to form working groups with a mix of ideological views to develop policy solutions to a wide range of issues, including criminal justice and drug policy reform.
During a livestream on Monday, the two former rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination laid out a shared agenda heading into the November election. Biden became the presumptive nominee after Sanders dropped out of the race last week, and the senator has now offered his endorsement.
Today, talk of legalization knows no bounds. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have reportedly flirted with the idea of forming a "bloc" that will legalize adult-use marijuana at the same time and by imposing the same statutory scheme. Activists are pushing measures to put legalization on the ballot in 2020 in Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, and Oklahoma.
How does he plan to legalize marijuana?
Sanders‘ proposes to deschedule marijuana, which would completely remove it from its classification under the Controlled Substances Act as highly dangerous and without any medicinal value.
Marijuana is now classified in the most restrictive category under federal drug laws — Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act — along with heroin and LSD.
People in Colorado still remember John Hickenlooper’s crack after the state legalized marijuana, a move he opposed: “Don’t break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.”
But Mr. Hickenlooper, the governor at the time of the 2012 initiative allowing recreational use of cannabis, eventually changed his mind. He acknowledged that fears of increased use by children did not materialize, and he boasted of the tax revenues for social programs that regulated sales delivered.
A growing list of Democratic presidential contenders want the U.S. government to legalize marijuana, reflecting a nationwide shift as more Americans look favorably on cannabis.
Making marijuana legal at the federal level is the “smart thing to do,” says California Sen. Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor whose home state is the nation’s largest legal pot shop. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a prominent legalization advocate on Capitol Hill, says the war on drugs has been a “war on people.”
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, one of half a dozen Democratic senators running for the White House, is reintroducing a bill on Thursday that would fundamentally end the federal government's prohibition on marijuana.