Sandara Park: On Politics: The Country’s Evolving Marijuana Debate

April 20, 2021

By Giovanni Russonello

Antonio de Luca/The New York Times

Six years ago, when John Fetterman first ran for the Democratic Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, he spoke out about his support for legalizing marijuana. He was the only candidate to do so.

But in just a few short years, the picture has changed.

"The true crazy fringe perspective is 'Reefer Madness' now — the overwhelming majority of people want this," Fetterman, now the state's lieutenant governor, said today in a phone interview. He was taking a brief pause between public events in celebration of April 20, a.k.a. 420, the unofficial national holiday for weed smokers.

"People are over it already," he added. "They're like, 'Why hasn't this happened? What are we waiting for?' Even Republicans."

Fetterman is campaigning for the Democratic Senate nomination again ahead of the 2022 election, and his camp has been even bolder this time about its support for legalizing pot. It's one of the core components of his platform.

[Read live updates on Derek Chauvin's guilty verdict in the killing of George Floyd.]

The campaign has been selling T-shirts festooned with cannabis leaves and green "420" text alongside Fetterman's name. Outside his office in Harrisburg, he frequently flies flags in support of marijuana legalization (alongside Pride flags) — in defiance of a bill passed last year by the Republican state legislature that sought to stop him from displaying them.

Yesterday, Fetterman's Senate campaign team welcomed Jordan Rogers, a 29-year-old activist and organizer, as its official "cannabis coalition leader."

Continue reading the main story

Rogers said that he'd been struck by Fetterman's decision in 2019 to tour all 67 counties in the state to discuss marijuana legalization. "He got a lot of traction in the center of the state, majority red," Rogers said. As the campaign's point person on pot, Rogers is "trying to build a coalition of everyone," he said. "I need Democrats, Republicans, independents, farmers, folks incarcerated, users in general — it's such a broad coalition."

johnfetterman.store

In fact, Democrats at the national level are increasingly seeing marijuana as a unity issue, as more than two-thirds of Americans now support legalizing pot, according to various polls — including at least about half of Republicans.

Continue reading the main story

Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, took to the Senate floor today to reaffirm his support for legalizing recreational marijuana nationwide, and talked up a bill he's drafting with Senators Cory Booker and Ron Wyden that would do exactly that. "Today is what you might call a very unofficial American holiday: 4/20," Schumer said with a grin.

"It's as appropriate a time as any to take a hard look at our laws that have over-criminalized the use of marijuana and put it on par with heroin, LSD and other narcotics that bear little or no resemblance in their effects either on individuals or on society more broadly," he added.

Last year, he encouraged Democratic candidates to run in support of legalization, seeing it as catnip for the party's young and progressive base but also popular with moderates and independents.

It's also a racial equity issue, as Schumer detailed in his floor speech today. "The war on drugs has too often been a war on people, particularly people of color," he said.

Continue reading the main story

In an interview with the website Marijuana Moment, he stressed the importance of equity. "We certainly think that we ought to make sure that the communities that have been most affected by these draconian laws get the benefits here," he said, "and we want to make sure that there are reinvestment initiatives and it doesn't all go to the big shots — that smaller businesses and minority businesses get a chance to be involved once marijuana is legalized."

Last month New York became the 15th state (in addition to Washington, D.C.) to legalize recreational pot use. The bill that Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed includes extensive provisions to address issues of racial equity. It not only expunges past convictions for marijuana-related offenses, but it also guarantees that 40 cents of every dollar in tax revenue from pot sales will go toward the minority communities that have been hardest hit by the consequences of drug enforcement.

Congress is on the move, too. On Monday, the House easily passed a bill that would eliminate federal laws that make it a crime for banks to do business with marijuana companies in states that have legalized the weed trade; 106 Republicans joined a united Democratic conference in voting for the bill.

But Schumer has indicated that he's loath to pass a smaller bill, when what he's really aiming for is all-out legalization. "I've always been of the view that while certainly we have to deal with the banking and financial issues that we should do them together with legalization," he told Marijuana Moment.

The one major Democratic figure who has not yet come around on legalizing weed is the most prominent of them all: President Biden. He said on the campaign trail that he would support decriminalizing it but that he felt further study was needed before he'd be comfortable legalizing it completely. Asked about legalization last month, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the president's stance "has not changed."

As you might remember reading in this newsletter, the Biden White House recently fired five staff members at least partly because of their past use of marijuana. Biden, who was an architect of some of the most punitive legislation passed during the war on drugs, has been slow to match the Democratic Party's change of heart on marijuana policy.

Bonita Bo Money, the founder of the National Diversity and Inclusion Cannabis Alliance, said her group and others that had supported Biden's presidential campaign last year were waiting on him to fully get behind legalization. "It's not moving the way that we think that it should," she said of the administration's stance.

By the same token, Money said she was wary of legalization happening too quickly, emphasizing the importance of developing a robust plan to create a pipeline into the cannabis industry for people in communities of color. Before the Biden administration gets behind legalization, she said, she hoped it would create "a good social equity program."

"We need to have ownership," Money said, referring to racial minorities. "We don't just need folks to work in the industry, we need to have folks running the cannabis industry."

Senate Democrats push to expand voting rights in a committee hearing featuring Stacey Abrams.

By Nicholas Fandos

Senate Democrats on Tuesday renewed their push for a national expansion of voting rights, summoning leaders from the battleground state of Georgia to help build a public case that Congress should intervene to lower state barriers to vote.

Senators on the Judiciary Committee began taking testimony from elected officials, academics and advocates at opposite ends of the partisan fight over voting that has erupted since the 2020 election. But the dominant witness was Stacey Abrams, the rising Democratic star who waged a battle against Georgia's divisive new voting law and who has done as much as anyone to focus her party's attention on the issue.

Abrams argued that the states like hers across the country are witnessing "a resurgence of Jim Crow-style voter suppression measures sweeping across state legislatures grounded in the 'big lie' about fraud and insecurity in the 2020 election," referring to false claims of election fraud by former President Donald Trump.

"When the fundamental right to vote is left to the political ambitions and prejudices of state actors, ones who rely on suppression to maintain power, federal intercession stands as the appropriate remedy," Abrams said.

While the hearing is not tied to any particular legislation, it comes as congressional Democrats seek to pass two significant voting bills. The first is a gigantic national elections overhaul, called House Resolution 1, that would force states to expand early voting and mail-in ballots, mandate automatic voter registration and neuter voter identification laws, among other measures. The second bill would restore a key enforcement provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that made it harder for states to target voters of color. It was struck down in 2013 by the Supreme Court.

Republicans fiercely oppose the first bill, which also includes a new public campaign financing system and a revamp of the Federal Election Commission, calling it an overreach designed to help Democrats consolidate power. They have argued that states like Georgia are simply acting to restore faith in their electoral systems.

This piece comes from our live briefing, where you can find more updates on the news in Washington today.

If you've found this newsletter helpful, please consider subscribing to The New York Times — with this special offer. Your support makes our work possible.

Georgia Faith Leaders Urge Boycott of Home Depot Over Voting Law

Black religious leaders representing more than 1,000 churches in the state issued a "warning shot" for other Republican-led states that are trying to limit voting access.

By Nick Corasaniti