By Tom Angell

 

Federal marijuana law reform could become an official part of the national Democratic Party Platform. That’s if supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have their way.

“You want real change in this country, you want it now and are prepared to take on the political cowardice and powerful special interests which have prevented that change from happening,” Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, wrote in an email to his supporters. “One place we think the agenda of these 12 million Americans should be reflected is in the official platform of the Democratic Party.”

The email links to a form where Sanders supporters can choose the issues they think are most important to put into the platform. One of the 24 options reads, “Remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substance Act.”

During the course of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders has staked out a marijuana law reform position that goes further than any other serious candidate has. In addition to calling for the descheduling of marijuana and pushing the federal government to respect state cannabis laws, Sanders said he would personally vote for legalization if it were on the ballot in his state.

An analysis by Marijuana.com earlier this week found that at least 12 state Democratic Party platforms this year are calling for cannabis law reform. That raises questions about when the national party will officially get on board with supporting legalization. Polls show that a significant majority of Democratic voters are in favor of ending prohibition, and a growing number of the party’s elected officials in Congress and state legislatures are actively working to enact cannabis legislation.

The Democratic National Committee’s Platform Drafting Committee is currently conducting a series of regional forums around the country to take testimony from advocates about what planks it should adopt this year. The 15-member committee was appointed by DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who does not support marijuana legalization, along with the presidential campaigns of Sanders and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.

Unlike Sanders, Clinton says she isn’t yet ready to make up her mind on whether legalization of marijuana is a good policy, but she has called for modest cannabis law reforms, including moving the drug to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act and allowing states to set their own laws without federal interference. She says she wants to gather more evidence about how legalization is being implemented in states that have ended prohibition before she decides whether to personally support it.

The Democratic Party’s 2012 national platform, silent on marijuana legalization, did cheer Congress’s passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, which it says played a role in “reducing racial disparities in sentencing for drug crimes.”

But the platform also seemed to express support for the current war on drugs approach of interdicting smuggling shipments and arresting traffickers. “We must help state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement work together to combat and prevent drug crime and drug and alcohol abuse, which are blights on our communities,” the document said.

In the email to his supporters, Sanders said it’s important to pressure the party to take pro-reform stands on issues like marijuana and others on which it has not boldly led in the past.

“The platform matters because it is a document that enshrines the values and goals of the Democratic Party,” he wrote. “It’s a document to which we can point and say, ‘This is what we believe, and this is what we fight for.’ And so the Democratic Party has a choice in the coming weeks, and that choice is whether or not to embrace a bold, fearless, progressive platform that has the potential to transform our country for generations.”

It is not known if the current platform committee members have already discussed adopting marijuana or drug policy reform planks in the 2016 document.