By Bridget Hennessy
One of the most colorful moments from the debate stage at last night’s Democratic presidential candidate forum came from New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. Addressing former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Booker said: “This week I heard him literally say that ‘I don’t think we should legalize marijuana.’ I thought you might have been high when you said it!”
Last Saturday in Nevada, Vice President Biden said that more research was needed to rule out whether cannabis was a “gateway drug.” Since then, the other major Democratic presidential candidates (all of whom support cannabis legalization), podcast host Joe Rogan, and dozens of other elected officials from Congress and across the country expressed their disagreement with “the gateway stance.”
But that wasn’t the only thing that happened in the world of cannabis politics yesterday. Earlier in the day, the Judiciary Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement bill (known as MORE). This is an important first step in the bill’s long and likely-exasperating journey to becoming a law.
And it would be a good law, as it would, among other things, deschedule cannabis at the federal level (read: open access to banking), expunge prior marijuana conviction records and use a 5% sales tax to benefit communities hit by the failed “war on drugs.”
Here’s my take away from all this: The momentum is moving in the right direction. But there are pockets of the political spectrum that need attention and education.
According to the Pew Research Center, an overwhelming majority of adults in our country (91%) say marijuana should be legal either for medical and recreational use (59%) or that it should be legal just for medical use (32%). There are still wide partisan differences in views, with 77% of Democrats favoring legalization, compared to 55% of Republicans.
But that’s the public. Public servants can be a different story. When it comes to lawmakers, there are certainly outliers. Cannabis legalization isn’t a done deal for every Democratic lawmaker. Vice President Biden is one example. We see many more at the state and local level. And not every Republican lawmaker is against it. The MORE bill passed the Judiciary Committee 24 to 10. Two of those “yes” votes were Republicans, and a few of the no votes were actually leaning yes, but had issues with specific language in the bill, not the overall intent.
It comes down to this: Strong public sentiment must translate into strong public advocacy and engagement. Public opinion is one thing, but “likely voters” are another. Likely voters skew much older and more conservative on social issues than the public-at-large.
Younger voters will be key in the upcoming election cycle. They will turn up and vote for candidates that support the vast majority of Americans who want legal access to cannabis and the huge revenues for public services that come with it.
We’ve already seen what focused, intelligent and consistent action can do. Shortly after last night’s debate ended, Vice President Biden tweeted a “clarification” of his views on cannabis, stating that he supports decriminalizing adult use and automatically expunging prior convictions; legalizing medical cannabis; allowing states to legalize adult use; and rescheduling cannabis so researchers can study its health impacts.
That was just yesterday. There is still a lot of tomorrows ahead of us. The Presidential election is a year away. The MORE bill faces dozens of obstacles in its effort to become law, including passage in other House committees, and then starting all over again in the Senate. The political thinking is it won’t survive. But we can all work together to change these betting odds.
The work is really just beginning. Feelings are one thing. Actions are another.
Please join us at wmpolicy.com to learn more about ways to engage and impact cannabis policy at the federal, state, local and community levels.
Bridget Hennessy is Vice President of Government Relations at Weedmaps.
