Legal Weed: Top Democrat To Introduce Landmark Marijuana Bill

On the eve of  “4/20,”  the unofficial annual “holiday” for cannabis enthusiasts, the most powerful Democrat in the United States Senate is moving to take pot off the federal list of banned drugs, allowing individual states to decide whether cannabis should be legal without worrying about whether the federal government will crack down on sales and use. (Note: Recent scholarship regarding pot has argued that the term "marijuana" is racist, and prefers that the terms "cannabis" or "pot" or "weed" be used in its place.) In January, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a green light to federal prosecutors to bust pot sellers and users in states where recreational and medical cannabis has been legalized, reversing an Obama-era policy that required the feds to lay off such cases. But if the bill that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York told VICE News that he will introduce next week were actually to pass, federal authorities would be out of the pot prosecution business altogether. “My personal view is legalization is just fine,” Schumer told the site. “The best thing to do is let each state decide on its own.” Nine states plus Washington D.C. have legalized cannabis for recreational use, while 29—more than half of all states in the U.S.—have legalized it for medical use. In January, Vermont legalized recreational cannabis with a vote of the state’s legislature, the first to do so. The other eight have used ballot measures to pass legal pot laws. The legislation pushed by the Demoratic leader is expected to attract a higher level of support than a current decriminalization bill sponsored by New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker whose “Marijuana Justice Act” has drawn only two co-sponsors. Schumer’s bill appears to to take a more moderate approach to cannabis legalization. While Booker’s bill would withhold federal funds from states that can be shown to have racial disparities in cannabis arrests and prosecutions, Schumer’s bill provides funds to back pot businesses owned by women and minorities, as well as for research into the health effects of cannabis. Both bills, however, would remove cannabis from the federal government’s list of controlled substances. “The legislation is long overdue based on, you know, a bunch of different facts. I’ve seen too many people’s lives ruined because they had small amounts of marijuana and served time in jail much too long,” Schumer told VICE. “Ultimately, it’s the right thing to do. Freedom. If smoking marijuana doesn’t hurt anybody else, why shouldn’t we allow people to do it and not make it criminal?” Schumer also said he would support legal cannabis in his own home state of New York, where former Sex in the City actress Cynthia Nixon is staging a high-profile run for governor with pot legalization as part of her platform. The Schumer bill is likely to be welcomed in many quarters of the adult entertainment industry, with one expert estimating that at least 40 performers, executives and others in the porn business have become involved in the burgeoning legal pot industry—including former Larry Flynt Publications exec Theresa Flynt, daughter of the Hustler magazine founder. Public Domain Photo by Glenn Fawcett / Wikimedia Commons (Pictured: Chuck Schumer)