Bernie Sanders got pretty specific with what he would do with marijuana legislation if elected in a recent interview.
Speaking to Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, has pledged to legalize marijuana by executive order.
“When I ran for president for the Democratic nomination in 2016, I talked about a broken criminal justice system, which ends up having in the United States more people in jail than any other country,” Sanders said. “And what I call for then, and I call for now, is the legalization of marijuana in America.”
Rogan discussed how pesticides and other poor agricultural practices can endanger cannabis consumers in states where it’s currently legal.
“All of this because it’s not federally legal,” Rogan explained. “Because we can’t have sanctioned, licensed companies doing an ethical job of growing something that any responsible, law-abiding person should be able to consume.”
The Controlled Substances Act places marijuana in the same Schedule One category as heroin, cocaine, MDMA and psilocybin.
“That is insane. Heroin is a killer drug,” said Sanders. “You can argue the plusses and minuses of marijuana, but marijuana ain’t heroin. So we have to end that and that’s what I will do as President of the United States. I believe we can do that through executive order and I will do that.”
“I think ultimately we have got to legalize marijuana, and what’s good news is some communities, some cities, are expunging the records. So if you were arrested [and] have a criminal record for selling marijuana, that is being expunged. And that is the right thing to do,” Sanders added.
