Jacob Sullum
The Democratic Party's platform committee, which already had approved reform-friendly language on marijuana, strenghtened that plank over the weekend, adopting an amendment backed by Bernie Sanders delegates that recommends rescheduling the drug to provide "a reasoned pathway for future legalization." That stance seems like a compromise between the positions staked out by presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, who says marijuana should be moved from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to facilitate research, and Sanders, who last fall became the first senator to introduce legislation that would repeal the federal ban on cannabis by removing the plant and its products from the CSA's schedules altogether.
The earlier platform language endorsed marijuana federalism and added, "We support policies that will allow more research on marijuana, as well as reforming our laws to allow legal marijuana businesses to exist without uncertainty." The new language says, "Because of conflicting laws concerning marijuana, both on the federal and state levels, we encourage the federal government to remove marijuana from its list as a Class 1 [sic] Federal Controlled Substance, providing a reasoned pathway for future legalization." Assuming that plank is in the final version of the platform, it will be the first time either major party has endorsed marijuana legalization, even as a distant prospect.
On Monday, meanwhile, the GOP platform committee rejected a much milder plank that voiced support for states that allow medical use of noncombustible marijuana products. The Huffington Post reports that one opponent of the language warned that mass murderers are "young boys from divorced families, and they're all smoking pot." Was that you, Roger Morgan?
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