Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate detailed numerous policy differences between frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), including one that hasn’t gotten much attention in the mainstream press: recreational marijuana.
CNN debate moderator Juan Carlos Lopez noted that Nevada — where the debate was being held — is going to have a measure to legalize recreational pot on the 2016 ballot, and asked Sanders how he would vote.
“I suspect I would vote yes,” Sanders said, to applause from the audience. “And I would vote yes because I am seeing too many lives destroyed for non-violent offenses. We have a criminal justice system that lets CEOs on Wall Street walk away, and yet we are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people for smoking marijuana.”
The answer was an evolution from ones the Vermont senator has given on the subject before. He’s said in the past that he doesn’t think recreational marijuana is a big issue facing the country. “I’ll look at it,” he said back in March. “I think it has a lot of support and I’ll be talking to young people and others about the issues.”
Clinton, however, detailed a different position. Lopez noted that Clinton had previously said she wanted to “wait and see what the evidence is” for recreational marijuana after Colorado and Washington — the two states where it is currently fully legalized — had done sufficient test runs with their laws.
On Tuesday night, Clinton said her position had not changed.
“I think that we have the opportunity through the states that are pursuing recreational marijuana to find out a lot more than we know today,” she said. “I do support the use of medical marijuana, and I think even there we need to do a lot more research so that we know exactly how we’re going to help people for whom medical marijuana provides relief. I think we’re just at the beginning, but I agree completely with the idea that we have to stop imprisoning people who use marijuana.”