Presidential hopeful Cory Booker is letting loose a new Union marijuana legalization bill that hopes to stop the Union government ’s long inhibition on pot .
Not only does the bill look to make marijuana and tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ) legal at the federal level , but the legislation will also retroactively excise the criminal records of people sentenced under marijuana self-possession laws .
The Senate bill was first put forward by Booker in 2017 but it failed in the upper chamber of Congress . While it ’s too other to say how far this bill will go , the wider pushing for drug policy reform , especially marijuana legalization or decriminalization , has gained further momentum since the last sentence it was introduced to Congress .
Since 2012,10 res publica and Washington DChave legalized some amount of marijuana for recreational use . At least 33 states plus DC also allow the use of medical cannabis .
“ The War on Drugs has not been a war on drugs , it ’s been a war on people , and disproportionately citizenry of color and low - income individual , ” Booker said in astatement . “ The Marijuana Justice Act seeks to overthrow decades of this unjust , unjust , and failed policy by removing marijuana from the inclination of controlled substances and make it legal at the federal layer .
" We must also fix the legal injury triggered by reinvesting in those communities that have been most harmed by the War on Drugs . And we must strike the records of those who have serve up their sentence , " he add .
" The end we search is not just legitimation , it ’s DoJ . "
Much of this rhetoric is in line with the wealth of evidence - establish research and statistics on the affair . In aseries of articles publishedin the British Medical Journal in 2016 , researchers called for doctors and other medical professionals to take the principal on plan a raw global drug policy because “ the warfare on drug has failed ” . They fence that proscription and stigma encourage less secure drug use and that this drug use should in the end be treat as a social wellness issue , not a reprehensible trouble .
While the Marijuana Justice Act is in the first place concerned with the social issue of marijuana prohibition , legalization could help to pave the way towards more research into the medicative benefits of the drug . Just last calendar month , the World Health Organization ( WHO)proposed downgrading cannabisunder outside law for the first metre , in igniter of the growing evidence regarding itsmedicinal benefits .
The legalization of marijuana is also a insurance policy that ’s back up by around six in 10 Americans ( 62 per centum ) , according to a recent survey bythe Pew Research Center .
Bernie Sanders append : " We must stop the nonsensical situation of marijuana being list as a agenda 1 drug alongside heroin . It is time to legitimize marijuana , expunge past marijuana article of faith and end the fail war on drugs . "
