Sanders Calls for Removing Federal Prohibition on Marijuana

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Wednesday said “the time is long overdue for us to remove the federal prohibition on marijuana.” The Democratic presidential candidate spoke at an event that was live-streamed to about 300 college campuses nationwide.

Sanders often gets big applause on college campuses when he calls for decriminalizing marijuana, The New York Times reports. At George Mason University on Wednesday, he said states should have the right to regulate marijuana in the same way state and local laws govern sales of alcohol and tobacco.

“That means that recognized businesses in states that have legalized marijuana should be fully able to use the banking system without fear of federal prosecution,” he said.

He proposed using revenue gained from a tax on marijuana to pay for drug rehabilitation for those who abuse harder drugs, the article notes. He said he saw a racial component to the millions of people imprisoned on drug charges, and added the legal equivalence of marijuana and heroin is absurd. “The criminal justice system is broken,” he said.

Sanders has changed his position on drugs. In a 1988 debate during a congressional race, he was asked whether he would abandon the war on drugs. He replied that legalization would in effect tell poor people living in “ghettos” that “it’s perfectly O.K. for you to get high, for you to get strung out, for you to be separate from productive society.”

He added, “It reminds me very much as to what the British did to the Chinese in China when they ran that country. It was fine that you had millions of Chinese strung out on opium, nobody really cared, and it was to the advantage of the British.”