If the Marijuana Justice Act passes, it would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act.
Today, on the eve of 4/20, Bernie Sanders joined Cory Booker on a live stream to talk about ending prohibition and co-sponsoring the Marijuana Justice Act, which if passed would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and allow states to legalize weed without federal interference.
According to NORML, at the moment 33 members of Congress have put their name on the House and Senate versions of this legislation, but there is still a long way to go.
So, in honor of 4/20, let’s all send a message to our federal officials and tell them to sign on to this important legislation.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is also a co-sponsor of the bill.
Forbes points out that while Booker and Sanders could well throw their hats into the ring for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, they and Senator Gillibrand are standing together in this fight.
“Although the three senators may be just months away from the start of a hard-fought political nominating contest, they are linking arms in support of the most far-reaching cannabis reform bill ever to have been filed in Congress,” writes Forbes’s Tom Angell.
“Leaders in the Democratic Party are increasingly recognizing that leading the charge on legalization is not only good policy, but good politics,” said Justin Strekal, political director of NORML per Forbes. “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.”
Even Scientific American, founded in 1845, called federal marijuana laws counterproductive and overly harsh in its May 2018 issue titled “End the War on Weed.”
“It is time to stop treating marijuana like a deadly drug, when science and public opinion agree that it is relatively safe for adult recreational use. The last thing we need is another expensive and ineffective war on a substance like cannabis—especially when there are far more serious drug problems to tackle,” writes Scientific American.
Source: The Weed Blog
