Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released a criminal justice reform plan on Sunday that includes proposals to legalize marijuana, expunge past cannabis convictions and provide for safe injection sites to combat the opioid overdose crisis.

The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate emphasized racially disparate arrest rates for marijuana and said that such disparities “pervade every aspect of the criminal justice system.”

“When Bernie is president, we will finally make the deep and structural investments to rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate,” his campaign website states.

A key component of the senator’s comprehensive proposal is changing federal drug laws and treating addiction as a mental health issue.

According to an outline of the plan, if elected president, Sanders will legalize marijuana while ensuring that revenue from cannabis sales are reinvested in communities “hit hardest by the War on Drugs.”

Sanders discussed aspects of his criminal justice reform vision at a campaign event in South Carolina where he addressed the cash bail system and drug criminalization. A tweet with video from the event points out that people continue to linger in prison due to high bail costs, including for simple marijuana possession arrests, while adults in legal states are able to “get marijuana delivered to your home.”

His plan also notes that people suffering from addiction would benefit from his presidency because he will provide them “with the health care they need by guaranteeing health care—including inpatient and outpatient substance abuse and mental health services with no copayments or deductibles” through a Medicare-for-all system.

Additionally, Sanders described two policies specifically aimed at mitigating the opioid crisis: 1) legalizing safe injection sites where people can use drugs like heroin under the supervision of medical professionals and receive guidance on curbing addiction, and 2) decriminalizing possession of buprenorphine, an opioid often used as an offramp in the treatment of heroin addiction.

First responders would also be encouraged to carry naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug, under his plan.

Here are three other drug reform proposals he included in the plan:

—Raise the threshold for when drug charges are federalized, as federal charges carry longer sentences.

—Work with states to fund and pursue innovative overdose prevention initiatives.

—Institute a full review of the current sentencing guidelines and end the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine.

“Today we are releasing a criminal justice plan that will reform every aspect of America’s racist, dysfunctional criminal justice system,” Sanders said in a campaign email blast that prompts recipients to sign a petition in support of the plan. “That includes ending mass incarceration, changing the way we police our communities, providing resources for victims of crime, ending cycles of violence, and more.”

Other than the drug-specific proposals, Sanders’s plan also calls for policing reform, dismantling the for-profit prison complex, broadening expungement opportunities and enhancing mental health services.

Presidential candidates have placed a strong emphasis on drug reform as part of their criminal justice agendas this cycle. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) both unveiled similarly targeted plans in recent months, for example.

But while drug reform is a main feature of Sanders’s plan to halve the federal prison population, he didn’t explicitly recommend decriminalizing drug possession as a means to that end like Buttigieg did in his criminal justice reform plan. Rather, the senator focused on sentencing reform and changing other punitive federal laws that have contributed to mass incarceration.

The plan also differs from Booker’s in its approach to executive action. Sanders said he would create “an independent clemency board removed from the Department of Justice and placed in White House” in order to reform the pardon and commutation process, while Booker said specifically he would immediately move to grant mass clemency to people convicted of drug offenses if elected.

The marijuana legalization movement is often described as a state-level experiment—and one aspect of its implementation that’s garnering more attention is how legalized jurisdictions approach cannabis taxes in different ways.

Pew Charitable Trusts has been monitoring taxation in the legal industry and released a report on Monday that explains the challenges of establishing effective tax schemes and accurately projecting revenues, especially considering that experts don’t have a sizable body of historical data on which to base predictions like they do for alcohol and tobacco.

That said, there are some lessons to be taken from recent years since early legalizers implemented their respective programs.

Because tax rates differ significantly for marijuana businesses and consumers depending on the state, revenue from cannabis sales has varied, leaving policymakers in a flux as they work to meet budget goals and predict future trends, Pew reported.

Revenue was 40 percent higher in the first six months of sales than Nevada anticipated, for example, while sales in California were 45 percent lower than initially projected.

Here’s a breakdown of marijuana tax revenue in five adult-use states: 

Pew also observed that revenue growth is slowing in Colorado and Washington, the first states to legalize for recreational use, as the market evolves.

“Supporters of legalizing recreational marijuana expected a new revenue source for states, but market uncertainties continue to challenge revenue forecasters and policymakers,” Pew concluded. “The difficulty in forecasting revenue is compounded by the fact that states have only recently begun to understand the recreational marijuana market: the level of consumer demand for recreational marijuana products, the types of users and how much they might pay for the drug, and competition with the black market.”

“States have learned some lessons but continue to grapple with unknowns.”

In order to prevent budget shortfalls that could impact funding for certain programs, policymakers should take caution and bear in mind the differences “between marijuana revenue’s short-term growth and long-term sustainability.”

“While these new dollars can fill immediate budget needs, they may prove unreliable for ongoing spending demands,” Pew said. “Policymakers should look to other, more familiar sin taxes for lessons on how to manage marijuana tax revenue most effectively.”

Despite prohibitionists’ often-expressed fears that legalization would lead more young people to use marijuana, new federal data released on Tuesday shows no such trend.

Reports of past-month cannabis use among those 12-17 remained stable from 2017 to 2018—and they’re significantly lower than in the years prior to when the first states began legalizing for adult use.

That’s according to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual report produced by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

“The percentage of adolescents in 2018 who used marijuana in the past year was lower than the percentages in 2002 to 2004 and in 2009 to 2013, but it was similar to the percentages in 2005 to 2008 and in 2014 to 2017,” SAMHSA said.

Via SAMHSA.

Recent studies that have used NSDUH data and other sources also demonstrate that youth marijuana use is not increasing post-legalization. In fact, research published in JAMA Pediatrics in July found that states with recreational cannabis experience a decline in underage marijuana use, with the study authors stating that regulated markets appear to deter illicit use.

Indeed, on a national scale, the percentage of adolescents who reported using marijuana began declining at a greater rate in the years after states started implementing legal cannabis systems. In 2018, 12.5 percent of those 12-17 said they used cannabis in the last month, compared to 13.5 percent in 2012, according to the NSDUH results.

Colorado and Washington State became the first U.S. states to vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use in late 2012, with legal sales commencing in 2014.

Between 2002 and 2018, the highest rate of adolescent marijuana use took place in 2002, when 15.8 percent reported past-month consumption.

“The survey results suggest that marijuana use among youth has remained stable and low in recent years, even as more states legalize medical and adult use,” Sheila Vakharia, PhD, deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s Department of Research and Academic Engagement, told Marijuana Moment. “Rather than encouraging increased use, it is possible that legalization has limited access and deterred youth use. We find that these results strengthen the case for legalization in the interest of public health and protecting our nation’s young people.”

What’s more, the report found that cases of cannabis use disorder declined again for the 12-17 group in 2018, marking the seventh year in a row that fewer young people seem to be misusing the substance.

Via SAMHSA.

Interestingly, these trends are developing even as people’s perceptions of the risks of casual marijuana consumption are dropping. That seems to contradict an argument from reform opponents who claimed that legalizing cannabis would normalize it in such a way that underage individuals would feel more emboldened to experiment with marijuana.

Via SAMHSA.

Overall, marijuana consumption increased across age groups by about one percentage point over the past year, the survey found, with the bulk of that rise being attributable to those over 26. Past-month cannabis use for that demographic increased from 12.2 percent in 2017 to 13.3 percent in 2018.

Hemp farms grew nearly 400% in the last year. Could the explosive expansion indicate what’s to come if marijuana is federally legalized, too?

California is expected to sell over $3 billion of legal weed this year. But, ironically, the illicit pot market is still flourishing, and is nearly three times more profitable.

And doctors have no idea why it’s happening.

Why Did the Feds Spend More on Weed Busts Than Fighting Domestic Terrorism?
According to a new report from VICE News, the government poured more money into prohibition efforts last year than it spent on preventing incidents of domestic terrorism.

Last weekend’s tragic mass shootings in Texas and Ohio have re-focused the country’s attention on domestic terrorism. Political leaders continue warning of the threats posed by immigrants and religious minorities, but right-wing extremists born on US soil have been responsible for launching more attacks and killing more Americans than foreign terrorists have for almost two decades now.

Yet, as the number of deadly assaults increase, the Trump administration has cut funding for government agencies created to fight domestic terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has drastically decreased funding and staff dedicated to fighting deadly homegrown extremism, in favor of ramping up its anti-immigration efforts.

“This administration has shown that they are minimizing the issue of domestic terrorism,” said former DHS analyst Daryl Johnson to VICE News. “At a time when we have heightened activity and the body count keeps rising, training is being defunded and grant money taken back.”

Related: Fuck-Tons of Weed That Will Never Get Smoked … Except Maybe By Cops

Under the current administration, funding for programs targeting right-wing radicals like those responsible for the recent shootings has been cut. The funding for these programs has been re-allocated to new initiatives that target immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and other minority groups.

“The government in fact has reduced resources to counter domestic terrorism, leaving our communities vulnerable to the next inevitable tragedy,” said George Selim, former head of the DHS Office of Community Partnerships (OCP), to Congress, VICE News reported. In the final year of the Obama administration, the OCP received $21 million in funding. The current administration cut the budget down to $3 million, reducing its staff from 16 employees and 25 contractors to just 8 employees.

The OCP was created to fund community efforts to end extremism on a local level. The agency distributed grants to organizations like Life After Hate, a group that helps people leave white supremacist groups. “I think those grants are important,” said Mary McCord, former DOJ national security official, to VICE News. “The federal government is never going to be truly successful in countering violent extremism without help, because anything with the words ‘US government’ slapped on it is going to be suspect in the community.”

Last year, the government spent $18 million — the same amount Trump cut from the OCP — on seizing and destroying cannabis plants. This funding was granted to the DEA’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program (DCE/SP), a program that has been finding and destroying pot farms since 1981. Much of the program’s funding was reportedly used to help California destroy its thriving black market, but the DEA apparently doesn’t even know where all of its money goes, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Even though the multimillion dollar DCE/SP budget seems extreme, it actually pales in comparison to other government funding excesses, VICE News unveiled. Just last September alone the Department of Justice spent $21 million on furniture. In just two months of 2017, the DHS and the Department of Defense spent $14 million on security details accompanying Trump’s golfing vacations to Mar-a-Lago. That same year, the DHS gave another $14 million to a consultancy firm just to hire two border patrol agents.

It seems unlikely that the current administration will change its stance on fighting right-wing extremism, but next year, the country will have a chance to elect leaders who realize that domestic terrorism is far more serious than cannabis prohibition.

Chris Moore is a New York-based writer who has written for Mass Appeal while also mixing records and producing electronic music.