“When you talk about a broken criminal justice system, here’s where you are—and this is why the American people are so angry,” began Bernie Sanders in his first post-Iowa stump speech on February 2 in Keene New Hampshire, a liberal stronghold near the Vermont border. “Some kid gets picked up in New Hampshire today for possessing marijuana, that kid will have a police record that will stay with him for his entire life. But if you are a wall street banker whose illegal behavior destroyed the lives of millions of people, nobody will prosecute you.”
This statement combines Bernie’s main campaign agenda, addressing gross and unprecedented income inequality by confronting the big banking system, with his tried-and-true liberalism toward social issues. Bernie’s pro-cannabis, but it hasn’t made as many appearances in his stump speeches as some supporters would like until now. Bernie breaking that seal in Keene is good news for cannabis advocates, but it’s also an incredibly shrewd move on Bernie’s part. By calling out his two biggest differences with Hillary Clinton in one speech just the day after a historic tie, he is acknowledging that if he’s going to beat Hillary, it’s going to be by attacking her on her most conservative issues—money in politics and cannabis prohibition.
Bernie did not appear to start out “pro-cannabis.” No handy link, but I recall early on him not having a lot to say other than he wasn’t terribly interested in legal cannabis.
The appearance is that Bernie listens.
This then happened:
Watch the young man with the loud yellow/burgundy hat behind Bernie. Watch his face.
Bernie stunned people with this small bit in his overall speech.
Then he filed a bill to end cannabis prohibition:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed a bill in the Senate on Wednesday that would abolish all federal penalties for possessing and growing marijuana. The "Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015" bill would remove references to cannabis in the Controlled Substances Act. Transporting marijuana from jurisdictions where it is illegal to places where it is not would still be prohibited.
So he has evolved on the issue to come to—amazingly for a federal politician — the CORRECT stance.
Cannabis continues to assert itself into the political process: toothpaste is out of the tube, not going back. More from the top link:
Elsewhere in the political world, cannabis continues to assert itself as one of the defining issues of 2016, with Sen. Sanders’s home state of Vermont appearing to have the tools in place to become the first state to completely legalize via legislative action, and legalization referenda beginning the process of their introduction in several states. To that end, in January Massachusetts lawmakers sent a fact-finding mission to Colorado in order to witness the logistics of a cannabis grow firsthand. It was also recently announced that Florida will get another chance to vote on a version of 2014’s failed medical cannabis bill, this time with much more funding behind it. But not everything has been good news for legalization supporters, with Marco Rubio returning from a political grave into which he already had one foot—the other having been resting precipitously on a banana peel. The outspoken prohibitionist is by far the biggest potential hurdle for progress on cannabis, and he’s gaining ground among those “true conservatives” for whom both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump stray too far from the party line.
I believe Markos is famous (or infamous, unsure) for suggesting that “single-issue voters” are problematic, or something like that. I, personally, am not one of those. I have NOT expected a president or a presidential candidate to even mouth the words “cannabis reform,” let alone actually file bills and talk about it on the campaign trail.
I am a Bernie voter, have been since the moment I knew he was running, for many reasons.
The cannabis thing came up after I already chose him. I’d be supporting him even if he wasn’t right about cannabis. I never expected a president to fix this issue.
But….a president is supposed to be a public servant and Bernie’s already done a public service.