You said during the 2020 elections that McConnell’s opposition to cannabis policy was the main thing that prevented it. But do you know or believe that there are other Republicans who support the removal of cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act?
Yes. What we want to do is to first present our comprehensive bill and then start to sit down with people who are not in favor of it on both sides, and A) try to educate them, B) see what their objections are and if they have any modifications that don’t interfere with the bill’s main purpose – we would certainly hear some suggestions if it brought more people on board. This is not to say that we are going to throw away things like record deletion – [things that are] very important to us – just because some people don’t like it.
Speaking of record elimination, most criminal records are at the state level, not the federal level. Do you think the federal government should put pressure on states to eliminate these records?
Yes.
How?
While we cannot demand that, we can get all kinds of different incentives – incentives and disincentives.
In that sense, decriminalization versus legalization is something that many people don’t fully understand. In fact, you told reporters yesterday that you call this “decriminalization” because it allows states to legalize it. And just to clarify, when you talk about decriminalization …
Personally, I am in favor of legalization. And the bill that we will present goes in that direction.
Does this remove marijuana completely from the Controlled Substances Act?
Then you will have to wait. I don’t want to go into our account details. You will have to wait and see.
The vice president sponsored the [comprehensive legalization legislation] MORE Act in the previous Congress. Was she involved in these legalization negotiations?
We would like to involve you, but not yet.
You said the timeline for this account is coming soon. Does this mean that we will see in the next two weeks?
I will keep what I said: soon.