Following Super Tuesday, there are now only two serious contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination: progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and, in the lead, centrist former vice president and Delaware senator Joe Biden. For voters concerned with cannabis legalization, the choice may seem an obvious one. But neither candidate has an entirely clean record, and it is worth examining the details.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sanders\u00a0released his plan for cannabis legalization<\/a>\u00a0last October, setting a goal of removing the plant from the Controlled Substances Act within his first 100 days after taking office. There was also a pledge of conviction expungement and provisions to keep Big Tobacco from colonizing the new industry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The plank is on his website, under the prominent and forthright title,\u00a0Legalizing Marijuana<\/a>. Speaking at a rally outside Dallas on Feb. 14, Sanders upped the ante \u2014 essentially pledging day-one legalization by executive order.<\/p>\n \u201cBy executive order, I can and will legalize marijuana in every state in this country,\u201d Sanders said, according to\u00a0Newsweek<\/a>. \u201cWe will expunge the records of those arrested for possession of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n To cheers from the crowd, Sanders promised to \u201cend the so-called War on Drugs\u201d and mass incarceration. \u201cIt is not acceptable to me that we have more people in jail in America than any other country on earth including China, [with a population] four times our size.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to end private prisons and detention centers,\u201d he added. \u201cCorporations should not be making millions of dollars in profit for locking up fellow Americans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While actually following through on his executive-order pledge is another matter (it could face challenge in the courts), Sander\u2019s plan is about the most audacious pro-legalization position possible from an American presidential candidate.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s stance is extremely timid by comparison to Sanders\u2019s. The \u201caudacity of hope<\/a>\u201d may have been the slogan of Biden\u2019s ticket when he was Obama\u2019s running mate 12 years ago, but his position on cannabis now displays precious little audacity.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0includes no cannabis plank. And while he has come around to a pro-decriminalization position, he still opposes legalization.\u00a0<\/p>\n This earned him some jibes at the candidates\u2019 debate in Atlanta on Nov. 21, 2019. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)\u00a0won guffaws from the crowd<\/a>\u00a0when he quipped of the ex-veep: \u201cThis week I heard him literally say \u2018I don\u2019t think we should legalize marijuana.\u2019 I thought you might have been high when you said it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Booker cast the issue in terms of racial justice, adding: \u201cMarijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As\u00a0Politico<\/a>\u00a0noted after the debate, Biden supports moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II \u2014 a less restrictive category under the Controlled Substances Act. But Schedule II substances, including most opioids, are still\u00a0very highly restricted<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the Democratic field, which was then much wider, Biden had the most conservative position on cannabis.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJoe Biden\u2019s platform lacks imagination,\u201d Queen Adesuyi, policy manager for the\u00a0Drug Policy Alliance<\/a>, told Politico. \u201cHe\u2019s competing against people who have single-handedly changed the conversation in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Just three days before the November 2019 debate, Biden had\u00a0tweeted about his stance on Marijuana Laws<\/a>. The brief statement said \u201cNo one should be in jail for marijuana use.\u201d But it only called to federally legalize medical marijuana and allow states to legalize \u201crecreational\u201d use. It also said he would \u201cdecriminalize recreational marijuana use and automatically expunge prior convictions, and \u201creschedule marijuana so researchers can study its health impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n So even his cautious call to reschedule is couched in terms that smack of Reefer Madness.<\/p>\n And Biden\u2019s position wasn\u2019t always even this progressive. He is still being dogged by his past comments on the cannabis question.<\/p>\n In 2010, when\u00a0asked by ABC News<\/a>\u2018s George Stephanopoulos about his views on cannabis, he responded: \u201cI still believe it\u2019s a gateway drug. I\u2019ve spent a lot of my life as chairman of the [Senate] Judiciary Committee dealing with this. I think it would be a mistake to legalize. The punishment should fit the crime. But I think legalization is a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n When reminded of this comment at a public event in Las Vegas on Nov. 16, 2019, Biden stuck to his guns.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe truth of the matter is, there\u2019s not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug,\u201d he said, according to\u00a0The Hill.\u00a0<\/a>\u201cIt\u2019s a debate, and I want a lot more before I legalize it nationally. I want to make sure we know a lot more about the science behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n But two weeks later, and after the Atlanta debate, a\u00a0Nevada Independent reporter called Biden<\/a>\u00a0for clarification on the question and he was quick to walk it back.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it is a gateway drug. There\u2019s no evidence I\u2019ve seen to suggest that,\u201d Biden said. He actually denied that he said it was a gateway drug: \u201cI said some say it\u2019s a gateway drug.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And while that is technically true of his comment in Vegas two weeks earlier, it is definitely not true of what he said in 2010.<\/p>\n This just came up again on March 3, when Biden\u00a0sat down for an interview<\/a>\u00a0in South Carolina with the online news show, \u201cThe Shade Room.\u201d He again tried to walk it all back.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you talk about marijuana, everybody says, \u2018Biden says it\u2019s a gateway drug,’\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a gateway drug.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He went on to add: \u201cI think we should totally decriminalize the use of marijuana and possession of marijuana. Not only decriminalize it, but if you\u2019ve ever been convicted of anything having to do with marijuana possession or use, your record is wiped clean\u2026 When you go for a job application and they say \u2018have you ever been arrested or been in prison,\u2019 you can legally say no. When I say wiped clean, I mean wiped clean.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the very next breath, however, he was adding caveats: \u201cBut this is where it gets confused. There are some scientists who say it may have an impact on mental health for some people. I don\u2019t think we should criminalize it at all, but we should at least study it, since it makes a difference.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Shade Room also asked Biden about the crime bill that he helped write as a senator 25 years ago, which had also been\u00a0assailed by Booker and other Democratic contenders<\/a>\u00a0as having contributed to mass incarceration. With dizzying cynicism, even President Donald Trump attacked Biden\u00a0on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0for his involvement in crafting the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act<\/a>\u00a0of 1994 earmarked billions for states to build new prisons, and to train and hire additional police. It expanded the federal death penalty and instated a federal \u201cthree-strikes\u201d life sentence mandate.<\/p>\n In a little-noted measure, it also actually imposed the death penalty for dealing cannabis in very large quantities. Large-scale cannabis cultivators and traffickers \u2014 meaning at least 60,000 plants or kilos \u2014 can be sentenced to death under the\u00a0Federal Death Penalty Act<\/a>, which was an amendment to the 1994 crime bill. There has been\u00a0some fear among state-legal big dispensary operators<\/a>\u00a0that Trump\u2019s Justice Department could actually use this measure to send them to Death Row.\u00a0<\/p>\n But why, you may ask, was it falling to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris to call out Biden on his support for the 1994 crime bill rather than to Sanders? Because the Vermont independent also voted for the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was\u00a0noted by Vox<\/a>\u00a0back in 2016, when then-candidate Hillary Clinton was being hounded by activists over her support for the bill signed into law by her husband. As Vox stated, \u201cone thing that\u2019s seldom noted \u2014 or only acknowledged as a footnote in stories about the 1994 law \u2014 is that\u00a0 Sanders, Clinton\u2019s opponent in the Democratic primary, supported the 1994 crime law too. And while Clinton wasn\u2019t in a position to vote for the bill as first lady, Sanders was in Congress and he did actually vote for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sanders may look like the best bet for cannabis voters, but they\u2019d be wise to temper their enthusiasm with a realistic sense of the compromises their man will have to make if he ever gets to the Oval Office \u2014 itself a daunting enough prospect.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, who do you support? <\/p>\n The post Bernie Beats Biden on Pot<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Following Super Tuesday, there are now only two serious contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination: progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and, in the lead, centrist former vice president and Delaware senator Joe Biden. For voters concerned with cannabis legalization, the choice may seem an obvious one. But neither candidate hasContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4053,50,10535,8751,11199,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41677,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41676\/revisions\/41677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Biden: From Audacity of Hope to Timidity of Dope\u00a0<\/h4>\n
\u2018Gateway\u2019 Gaffe Haunts Biden<\/h4>\n
Both Voted for Cannabis Death Penalty\u00a0<\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Bernie Beats Biden on Pot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"