US Senator Bernie Sanders and 2020 Democratic Presdiential candidate waited until 4:20 PM on America's East Coast to reveal his proposal to legalize Cannabis in the United States by presidential order, if he is elected.

"Too many lives were ruined due to the disastrous criminalization of marijuana," Sanders said.

In his first 100 days as president, Bernie says he would sign an executive order directing the attorney general to declassify cannabis as a controlled substance, thus removing marijuana from the drug scheduling system and effectively legalizing weed at the federal level.  Then he would push Congress to pass a bill to "ensure permanent legalization of marijuana".

The next steps would have his administration working with states and federal authorities to expunge past convictions for marijuana.  And as Bernie also outlined in his criminal justice reform plan, he would also set up an independent clemency board to grant those with federal convictions an early relief.  

There are concerns that in the eleven states and the District of Columbia which have already legalized weed on the local level that marijuana businesses could turn into new versions of Big Tobacco, just with a different leaf.  Bernie would discourage that by: Financially incentivizing cannabis businesses to be nonprofits; prohibiting products and labels that target young people; banning tobacco companies, as well as other companies that make cancer-causing products or are "guilty of deceptive marketing" from the cannabis industry.