Silly Gilli goes to bat for pot
I think it’s clear: It’s time to legalize marijuana and expunge nonviolent marijuana convictions.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called on the Biden administration to ease the federal prohibition on weed Sunday — arguing that the current laws dating to the 1970s have “torn apart” too many lives.
The New York Democrat, along with Rep. Jerry Nadler and several state lawmakers, urged Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Drug Enforcement Administration to de-schedule cannabis on the national level, pointing out that the drug currently has the same classification as heroin and is in a more dangerous category than fentanyl and cocaine.
“I think it’s clear: It’s time to legalize marijuana and expunge nonviolent marijuana convictions,” Gillibrand said during a press conference Sunday afternoon in Harlem.
She said she plans to send a new letter on the issue to the Justice Department and DEA on Monday in hopes it’ll “turn up the heat.”
“I’ve been pushing this now for four years, and there’s no excuses left,” Gillibrand insisted.
“The drug was classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance in the 1970s as part of President Nixon’s punitive war on drugs,” Gillibrand said.
End ‘scarlet letter’
“Since then, countless lives have been torn apart as individuals and primarily black and brown communities have been targeted and arrested for nonviolence, cannabis-related offenses,” she added.
Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, said the “original sin” was placing weed in the Schedule 1 category with drugs like heroin “where it obviously did not belong.”
“No one should have to wear a cannabis conviction like a scarlet letter,” he said. “It is time to end the prohibition and criminalization of marijuana at the federal level.”
Gillibrand told The Post that because it’s scheduled the same way as dangerously addictive drugs, cannabis can’t be used medically at the federal level, including at Veterans Affair even though it’s “one of the best medicines for PTSD for our service members.”
“We’ve had the scourge of fentanyl and opioids on Long Island and across New York state to great detriment, [with] many young people dying. And that is not the impact of cannabis,” she said.