Politics
Cory Booker Will ‘Accept Any Progress’ On Marijuana, Saying There’s A ‘Common Purpose’ For Reform Across Parties
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) says that while federally legalizing marijuana represents “justice,” he’s willing to “accept any progress” on cannabis as President Donald Trump weighs a rescheduling proposal. And the senator said, contrary to the partisan “tribalism” that’s endemic in the country, Americans of all political background generally agree that the issue is an “area where we have a common purpose.”
At an event in Washington, D.C. that was hosted by IgniteIt on Monday, Booker spoke broadly about the future of cannabis policy, touching on the pending rescheduling issue, full legalization and the bipartisan politics of marijuana reform.
“Justice is descheduling. We all know that,” Booker said, referring to the idea of removing cannabis completely from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which would federally legalize it. “That’s what the right thing to do is: to deschedule. But I will accept any progress over no progress.”
That line might raise some eyebrows among the senator’s critics in the cannabis space who have strongly protested Booker’s prior stance that he was unwilling to support bipartisan marijuana banking legislation without first seeing to it that communities most impacted under prohibition are no longer subject to criminalization and receive restorative justice.
Booker has long championed comprehensive marijuana reform in Congress, however, and he said part of what informs his position is the fact that cannabis is currently a Schedule I drug under the CSA alongside substances such as heroin, which “defies all science and reality.”
“To have it Schedule I—have it the same schedule as these much more severe substances that we all know the consequences can be for our communities—is absurd,” he said.
The senator also reflected on his 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, where at one point he was on the debate stage with former President Joe Biden and told him that whoever created his marijuana policy platform “must have been high” because of its incrementalism.
“Everybody in the auditorium laughed,” Booker said, as IgniteIt noted. “My mom didn’t. She’s like, ‘Do not accuse the vice president of the United States of being high.’ My mom was not pleased.”
“I have been consistently fighting this battle for a long time,” the senator said. “I don’t care, Republican or Democrat—by the way, I think most of the problems in this country, the lie that we tell is that they are left or right. No, they are not. We agree on so much more than we disagree with.”
“The savagery of our tribalism, unfortunately, I think it is a delusion that undermines the truth,” the senator said. “The truth is that we are a nation that has common pain, but our politics don’t serve us to come together around a common purpose. This is an area where we have a common purpose.”
To that point, marijuana reform has enjoyed sizable bipartisan support from the American public. But Republican support has seen a notable drop-off since last year, according to a recent Gallup poll. The reasons for the shift aren’t clear, but it comes at a time of heightened debate about the nation’s laws governing consumable hemp products.
Meanwhile, although it’s been about three months since Trump said he’d be making a final decision on the pending marijuana rescheduling proposal within weeks, a White House spokesperson recently told Marijuana Moment that the process remains “ongoing.”
