By Eugene Scott / San Diego Union-Tribune – Washington Post / July 15, 2021
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced legislation Wednesday to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, vowing to use his clout as majority leader toward reversing policies and laws that he says have caused significant harm to the lives of thousands of Americans.
The draft bill, which is co-sponsored by Sens. Cory’ Booker, D-N.J., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would remove federal penalties associated with cannabis, expunge nonviolent federal cannabis-related criminal records and begin regulating and taxing the drug.
“This is monumental, because, at long last, we are taking steps in the Senate to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs,” Schumer said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “I was the first Democratic leader to come out for the legalization of marijuana.”
Public support for legalizing marijuana is high, with 91 percent of Americans saying marijuana should be legal in some form, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. Even Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices, recently wrote that federal laws against marijuana use or cultivation may no longer make sense.
“A prohibition on intrastate use or cultivation of marijuana may no longer be necessary or proper to support the Federal Government’s piecemeal approach,” he wrote in June.
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