While the majority of eyes were fixed on the GOP debate Wednesday evening, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was fixed on stealing the attention of America’s students during his national town hall meeting that was live-streamed at universities across the United States.
Although not all 2016 candidates back the use of medical and recreational marijuana, Sanders has made it into one of his talking points since the first Democratic debate.
During his student town hall meeting, held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia on Wednesday, Sanders told the crowd of students, “In my view, the time is long overdue for us to remove the federal prohibition on marijuana.”
The young audience erupted with cheers of support, but one young man was caught completely off-guard with Sanders’ pro-pot stance.
Sanders continued, ”In my view, states should have the right to regulate marijuana the same way that state and local laws now govern the sale of alcohol and tobacco.”
Although it’s not surprising that Sanders intends to make America’s marijuana policy a state issue instead of federal, his pot daze is somewhat of a new stance for him. Earlier this year, Sanders told Yahoo‘s Katie Couric that one of his concerns with marijuana is that it’s consider by some to be a gateway drug, which could lead users to harder substances such as cocaine and heroin.
Currently, marijuana is recreationally legal in Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Washington, D.C. and Oregon, but it remains on the Schedule 1 tier of the DEA’s drug list, claiming it has “no currently accepted medical use,” despite marijuana being medically legal in 23 states on varying levels.
[H/T: Reddit]
