At some point in the future, we may see a world where someone can begin smoking marijuana and look around and realize that it has become accepted and legalized just like tobacco and alcohol has. Senator Bernie Sanders probably wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind, but it must be noted that he has become the first presidential candidate to announce that he wishes to remove marijuana from the Fed’s list of dangerous drugs. This has been a turning point in our relationship with marijuana.
During a broadcast in Virginia town hall which was shown to over 300 college campuses on Wednesday, Sanders announced this to a crowd over 1,700 applauding students: “Too many Americans have seen their lives destroyed because they have criminal records as a result of marijuana use,” Sanders stated. “That’s wrong. That has got to change.”
However, this does not mean that Sanders is actually calling for the legalization of marijuana. This does mean, though, that the benefits of removing marijuana from the list of dangerous drugs would be very beneficial in the following ways: “States would be allowed to legalize it without interference from Washington, it would help economies involving pot (like banking) grow without fear of prosecution from the federal government, and fewer people would go to jail for possessing marijuana.” We are still a long way from that actually happening, even though the majority of the United States is actually in favor of legalizing marijuana along with more and more states legalizing cannabis.
There are more reasons why his announcement was big for marijuana. Firstly, the medical marijuana community as a whole would agree that cannabis is not as dangerous as other drugs such as cocaine, heroin and other very addictive drugs that it is currently considered with. Other respected organizations state that the classification that marijuana currently has limited the amount of research that can be done on its health potentials. In a way, Sanders has brought a new view to the marijuana sector that nobody else has touched upon yet.
