Pot is currently a Schedule I drug according to the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule I narcotics are viewed to have the high potential for abuse, no medical benefit at all and lack of a safe manner of use even with medical supervision. Marijuana obviously does not belong in the same schedule as heroin. It has been proven to have a very small addiction rate, many medicinal benefits and is safer to use than alcohol.

Keeping a substance in Schedule I means many things that have kept pot from becoming more mainstream. It inhibits research on marijuana. A lot of what we know about pot comes from studies in other countries. Even Dr. Sanjay Gupta had to travel to Israel to learn more about uses of medical marijuana in hospitals. It also maintains the federal monopoly on pot grown for medical research. Senators Cory Booker, Kristen Gillibrand and Rand Paul introduced legislation calling for the federal government to expand its list of medical marijuana suppliers. And, it maintains the federal government's prohibition on cannabis, causing much confusion considering that forty states and the District of Columbia have some form of medical marijuana and that four states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational pot. Several more states are likely to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in 2016.

The issue of medical and recreational marijuana legalization should be left to the states. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government granted the power to prohibit pot. In order to prohibit alcohol, the Eighteenth Amendment had to be passed. Similarly, the federal government should need a constitutional amendment to prohibit marijuana. Only one candidate in the field wants to get the federal government out of the way on cannabis and honor the constitution by doing so, making Sanders' position on cannabis legalization vastly different and more progressive than Hillary Clinton's. Clinton wants to move pot to Schedule II with cocaine, which would legalize medical marijuana but still prohibit recreational marijuana. By moving pot completely off the schedule, like Sanders wants, the federal government would be forced to stop usurping a power in prohibition that it was never intended to have.