New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D), a chill dude, formally introduced his bill to legalize marijuana Friday.
Schumer outlined his support for decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level in a Medium post, being careful to stipulate that he still believes individual states should be able to regulate the drug's consumption and sale as they wish. His proposal "will allow each state to ultimately decide how they will treat marijuana," Schumer wrote.
The senator acknowledged that his proposal reflected a change in his thinking. He attributed his attitudinal shift to, in large part, the evolving perceptions of the public: "When I first came to Congress in 1981, only 1 in 4 Americans believed marijuana should be made legal," he wrote. He also spelled out the skewed legal ramifications of criminalized marijuana:
When looking at the support for legalization that clearly exists across wide swaths of the American population, it is difficult to make sense of our existing laws. Under current federal law, marijuana is treated as though it's as dangerous as heroin and more dangerous than cocaine.
A staggering number of American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are African-American and Latino, continue to be arrested every day for something that most Americans agree should not be a crime. Meanwhile, those who are entering into the marijuana market in states that have legalized are set to make a fortune. [Chuck Schumer, via Medium]
Schumer's bill will also "inject real dollars into minority and women-owned businesses" to try to offset the racialized nature of marijuana arrests, he said.
The senator spoke to Vice News about his proposal, in an interview that aired late Thursday, where he also signed a bong. Read more about Schumer's proposal — a proposal he released on April 20 — at Medium.