Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says Congress is \u201cmaking progress\u201d toward ending the drug war and federally legalizing marijuana, and it helps that more states are enacting the reform in the meantime.<\/p>\n
At a town hall event focused on Democrats\u2019 large-scale budget plan last week, a voter said he was going to ask Sanders the same question he posed two years ago about when lawmakers are \u201cgoing to end the racist, idiotic drug war.\u201d The Senate Budget Committee chairman responded that he\u2019s \u201chappy to give you a better answer than I gave it two years ago in the sense that I think we\u2019re making progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy own view is that the so-called war on drugs has been an abysmal failure. It has destroyed god knows how many lives, disproportionately African American and Latino,\u201d Sanders, a longstanding champion of marijuana reform<\/a>, said at the Iowa event. \u201cWhat you are now seeing is a radical change of consciousness with regard to that war. You are seeing state after state after state legalizing marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \u201cI would legalize marijuana nationally. I am supportive of that,\u201d he added. \u201cBut we are making some progress in state after state.\u201d<\/p>\n Sanders later brought up marijuana separately when he was asked about the prospect of passing legislation to raise the federal minimum wage, especially when certain moderate Democrats in the Senate have signaled they wouldn\u2019t be supportive of the policy change.<\/p>\n The senator said he views the issue similarly to how he looks at cannabis reform.<\/p>\n \u201cThe good news is that state after state is in fact passing $15 an hour legislation,\u201d he said. \u201cA number of states have done it. A number of cities have done it. We\u2019re making progress in the same sense that we\u2019re making progress of legalizing marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n State-level cannabis reform efforts have continued to underscore the increasing bipartisan popularity of legalization. But what remains to be seen is whether there\u2019s enough congressional support to move the policy forward at the federal level.<\/p>\n This session, advocates are focused on a marijuana descheduling bill<\/a> that\u2019s being led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).<\/p>\n After introducing a discussion draft of the legislation in July, the senators opened a comment period to get public input on its provisions before the bill is finalized. That comment window closed on Wednesday<\/a>, and much of the feedback focused on issues of social equity, licensing, tax policy and interstate commerce.<\/p>\n There have been some serious questions about whether the senators will be able to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation in their chamber. Even with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, there are some members of Schumer\u2019s own party who\u2019ve expressed concerns about the comprehensive reform.<\/p>\n President Joe Biden\u2019s position on cannabis presents another complication. Minutes after the senators unveiled the bill,\u00a0White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked<\/a>\u00a0at a briefing about the administration\u2019s position on the legislation and said \u201cnothing has changed\u201d with respect to Biden\u2019s opposition to adult-use legalization.<\/p>\n Sanders said last month that Biden could and should use executive authority to end federal marijuana prohibition<\/a> on his own\u2014but the two of them have \u201cdifferences\u201d when it comes to drug policy.<\/p>\n As a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 himself, Sanders pledged that he would legalize marijuana across the country on his first day in office<\/a>\u00a0if elected. That idea has been questioned by some expects, however, as there are\u00a0unique challenges associated with a presidential move<\/a>\u00a0to unilaterally remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).<\/p>\n \u201cJoe Biden and I on marijuana\u2014I think the war on drugs has been just a disaster for this country, for the African-American community,\u201d Sanders said last month. \u201cI think it should end. I think marijuana should be legalized. We do [could] that fairly simply. But yeah, so we have differences.\u201d<\/p>\n After their primary battle and prior to the general election, Biden and Sanders established a criminal justice task force that was charged with making various policy recommendations for the incoming president. But\u00a0marijuana legalization did not make the cut<\/a>, despite the fact that many members of the group personally supported the reform.<\/p>\n Stacey Walker, a Linn County, Iowa supervisor who was recruited for the task force,\u00a0said earlier this year that Biden<\/a>\u00a0\u201cwas really concerned about how [supporting legalization] could have impacted the outcome of the election\u201d despite the fact that a supermajority of voters support the reform.<\/p>\n In any case, advocates have sharply criticized the administration for failing to take steps to enact even the more modest reforms Biden did promise, such as decriminalizing possession and expunging past records, and it seems increasingly likely that it will be incumbent upon Congress to fulfill those goals.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s Drug Czar Wants To Make It Easier To Research Marijuana, Psychedelics And Other Schedule I Substances<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Bernie Sanders Touts \u2018Progress\u2019 On Legalizing Marijuana And Ending The Drug War<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says Congress is \u201cmaking progress\u201d toward ending the drug war and federally legalizing marijuana, and it helps that more states are enacting the reform in the meantime. At a town hall event focused on Democrats\u2019 large-scale budget plan last week, a voter said he was goingContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49799"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49800,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49799\/revisions\/49800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Bernie Sanders Touts \u2018Progress\u2019 On Legalizing Marijuana And Ending The Drug War<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"