Would Bernie Sanders Decriminalize Drugs? | Joe Rogan

No, on the subject of drugs. Marijuana is obviously a big issue in this country and we've seen many states make it recreational including this one. What do you think could be done and what should be done to have this across the board, especially federally? You know, there's a guy that I have on the podcast coming up soon, his name is John Norris and he wrote a book on the cartels growing marijuana illegally all over this country and selling it, especially particularly in California now because it's a misdemeanor because it's legal recreationally and selling it with all sorts of horrible pesticides on it. All sorts of like very, in fact, deadly chemicals. All of this because it's not federally legal because we can't have sanctioned licensed companies doing an ethical job of growing something that any responsible law abiding person should be able to consume. Okay. Let me say this. When I ran for president for the Democratic nomination in 2016, I talked about a broken criminal justice system which ends up having in the United States more people in jail than any other country. We have more people in jail than China does which is a communist authoritarian country. What I called for then and I call for now is the legalization of marijuana in America. Right now, you have a federal law. It's called the Controlled Substance Act. Here's heroin. Here is marijuana. They're at the same level. That is insane. Heroin is a killer drug. You can argue the pluses and minuses of marijuana but marijuana ain't heroin. So we have to end that and that's what I will do. As president of the United States, I believe we can do that through executive order and I will do that. First of all, what we have now is a number of states and I'm very proud. I talked about during 2016 what seemed kind of radical, the need to legalize and decriminalize marijuana, a very radical idea. Four years ago, it is spreading all over the country. By the way, it blows my mind to drive through Nevada, I think here even in California. Now you see signs. Corporations buy our marijuana. Four years ago, people were getting arrested for doing that. Right? Their lives being destroyed. Well, particularly in Nevada, there was life sentences given out in the 70s. You believe that and now you have corporations selling the damn product that people went to jail for. So I think ultimately we've got to legalize marijuana and what's good news in a sense is some communities, some cities are expunging the records. So if you were arrested, have a criminal record for selling marijuana, that is being expunged and that is the right thing to do. We can argue about the pluses and minuses. I'm not a great fan of drugs. Other people, I've smoked marijuana a couple of times, didn't do much for me. Other people I guess have different impacts. Just a couple times? That's real, true. It didn't do much for you? Yeah, it made me cough. What were you getting at? I don't know. I was in Vermont, Northern Vermont. Oh, that's the problem. Maybe. It'll do something for you. Well, it made me cough a whole lot. All right, but I gather other people have had different experiences. Correct? Oh, for sure. Yeah, I certainly have. The other problem is, of course, with illegal drugs comes, you get this horrible cycle, particularly in inner cities where you have people that are incarcerated for illegal drugs. Illegal drugs seem to be the only way out. The hard drugs, when we're talking about cocaine and all these other drugs, how does one stop that and would you ever consider legalizing all drugs or decriminalizing all drugs? Not at this point. No, I wouldn't. You're touching on a real tragedy. Yes. And when we talk about criminal justice in America, we have over two million people in jail. They are disproportionately African-American, Latino and Native American. And here's what I think. I think in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, what we have got to do instead of building more jails and locking up more people, we really do have to invest in our young people, especially young people in distressed communities. What does that mean? If we can – and we can do this with a proper amount of resources, make sure the kids are not dropping out of school. If you drop out of school today, you know, say you drop out in your second or third year of high school, you don't have an education, you don't have any job skills, what are you going to do with your life? And the answer is you may well do drugs, you know, or you'll get in trouble, self-destructive activity or destructive activity, you're going to end up in jail. It makes so much more sense from a humane perspective, protecting our people as well as the financial situation. We're spending $80 billion here to invest in these kids. What does it mean? It means making sure they get the education that they need, paying attention, having good schools, making sure that they get the jobs that are out there, doing job training. There was a principal in a school in southern Vermont – I'll never forget what she said. It was a working class school. And she said, Bernie, I love these kids. I am not going to let them drop out. And she had a mentoring program just watching the kids who are mostly at risk so that they would not end up going through the cracks and getting into trouble. That's what we should be doing as a nation. And when we do that, we invest in the kids. We get them jobs. We get them education. The likelihood is – the likelihood of them falling into bad ways is significantly reduced. Trevor Burrus All those things sound great. The uncomfortable reality about drugs though is that when drugs are illegal, criminals sell them. There's obviously a need for drugs in terms of – not necessarily a need, but a demand for drugs. There's a demand for drugs in this country that's absolutely fueling Mexican cartels and illegal drug runners inside this country. I mean there's a lot of that. How do you curb that if drugs are illegal? John Deere You're raising a deep question. Trevor Burrus Yeah. John Deere All right. So the question essentially that you're asking is what is the cause of the opioid epidemic? Yes. Trevor Burrus That's one aspect of it. But the opioid epidemic is interesting because there's so much of it that's coming legally. John Deere Right. Trevor Burrus That's not the drug cartels. John Deere That's the pharmaceutical industry. John Deere You're right. But the heroin is illegal. Trevor Burrus Yes. John Deere All right. Now you're asking – this is a very, very deep question which we don't talk about terribly much. Why is it that so many of our people are turning to drugs, to alcohol by the way? I don't mean to drink tonight but I mean serious alcohol problems and tragically to suicide. We now have for the last three years something that is ahistorical, never happened before in modern history and that is our life expectancy is actually going down. This is hitting all over the country but it is especially hitting rural areas. The doctors are saying is that these are diseases of despair, despair. So you're in West Virginia. You're in rural Ohio or any place, Vermont, any place and the job you used to have earning a decent living is now in China. Your kid can't afford to go to college. Maybe you can't afford healthcare. You've got nothing to look forward to. So that scenario, drugs become – alcohol becomes a way out and the worst case is suicide. So I think what we're talking about is why is this happening often in rural areas, in urban as well and how can we reestablish hope and optimism in the American people? And that gets back to a whole lot of other issues. It means if people have healthcare as a right, that will certainly play a role in this thing that walk into the doctor when they need. But it also means that people need decent jobs to pay them a living wage. That means we have to rebuild rural America. We have to rebuild the depressed communities in urban America. It means that we have to have a great educational system and people say, oh, that's great, Bernie. That's utopian. It is not utopian. It is something that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we can afford and we should be doing rather than giving – creating a situation where Amazon pays zero in federal income taxes. So to answer your question, it's a deep question. And again, I'm not here to tell you. I have all the answers. But there are a lot of people out there who have basically given up hope and for those people, I guess, drugs is the alternative. Trevor Burrus So what you're saying essentially is that if we can do something to mitigate despair, then we'll do something to at least stop some of the demand for these illegal drugs. Bernie Sanders I believe that is the case. Look, if I am optimistic, if I'm excited about going to work tomorrow and I'm seeing my kid doing great in school and when I get sick, I can go to the doctor's office. I have a sense of community. My downtown is not all bordered up because businesses have left. But we have a community. Yeah, the strong likelihood is there will be less diseases of despair and drugs than we currently see.