Chuck Schumer was recently installed as the Senate Majority Leader and he has reiterated this week that marijuana reform will be a priority for his chamber.
In his first public comments on cannabis policy since he gained the top leadership position, Schumer said federal marijuana reform will be part of a racial justice agenda that lawmakers will pursue in the 117th Congress.
According to Schumer, when it comes to marijuana reform, the issue intersects with both racial and economic justice.
“A young man is arrested with a small amount of marijuana in his pocket. He has a criminal record the rest of his life, can’t become a productive citizen—this one won’t hire him, that won’t hire him. Change that,” he said to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “There’s lots to do, and we have to succeed.”
Maddow had asked what his top legislative priorities were for the new year. He first listed climate change, then included cannabis when discussing economic and racial inequality and concluded by discussing democracy and election reform.
“Those are the three stools,” he said.
“I’m a big fighter for racial justice, and the marijuana laws have been one of the biggest examples of racial injustice, and so to change them makes sense,” Schumer said last October. “And that fits in with all of the movement now to bring equality in the policing, in economics and in everything else. Our bill is, in a certain sense, at the nexus of racial justice, individual freedom and states’ rights.”
Now with Democrats in control, advocates and lawmakers are preparing for several marijuana reform proposals that could eventually make their way to President Biden’s desk.
