It seems that Bernie Sanders wants to show that he is a man of his word. On Tuesday Nov. 4, Sanders filed a bill in the Senate titled the, “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015.” Now begins the hard part of trying to find co-sponsors for the bill in an attempt to get the Senate to pay attention.
According to the Huffington Post:
“The Senate bill would remove marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of the “most dangerous” drugs and strike marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, allowing states to decide whether they want to legalize pot for recreational or medical use without federal intervention.”
Not only would this Senate bill give the power back to the citizens of each state to decide on their own, it would also help in the area of non-violent drug offenses. Since the last Democratic debate, Sanders seems to have been getting closer to making this move in the Senate. During the debate, Sanders was asked how he would vote in Nevada’s 2016 ballot to legalize recreational marijuana. Sanders answered by saying:
“I suspect I would vote yes, and I would vote yes because I am seeing in this country, too many lives being destroyed for non-violent offenses. We have a criminal justice system that lets CEO’s on Wall Street walk away, and yet we are imprisoning, or giving jail sentences to, young people who are smoking marijuana. I think we have to think through this war on drugs, which has done an enormous amount of damage, we need to rethink our criminal justice system, and we’ve got a lot of work to do in that area.”
While this type of action will no doubt be popular with voters of all ages, especially the younger ones, filing this bill with the Senate shows that Sanders is not afraid to take action. Especially when there are groups that seem intent on keeping marijuana illegal.
