Where the 2020 presidential candidates stand on marijuana legalization

If there’s one thing that united Democrats and Republicans in the Reagan era (besides their unfortunate fixation with perms), it was their near universal hatred of weed. Everybody was a cop back then. Walter Mondale, the Democratic candidate for president in 1984, called for another “War on Drugs” — all drugs. Ronald Reagan, for his part, believed that marijuana was “probably the most dangerous drug in the United States.”

Fast forward to the 2020 election, when politicians have largely done an about-face, at least when it comes to weed. Politicians aren’t just campaigning for medical marijuana, they’re advocating for recreational marijuana to be legalized: explicitly, vocally, and on their campaign pages.

Were it not for the hundreds of thousands of people arrested for marijuana law violationsevery year, it’s almost like the past 40 years of aggressive anti-marijuana drug policy didn’t exist.

Here’s what Daniel Mallinson, assistant professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, thinks of the tectonic political and cultural shift on marijuana legalization:

“It started in the liberal states. There was a big political shift there that has since shifted to more conservative, battleground states — specifically when it comes to medical marijuana,” Mallinson told Mashable in a phone interview. [Read more at Mashable]