Now he is the Senate Majority Leader and this is what he had to say:
Dear Mr.xxx:
Knowing of your interest in ending the federal prohibition of marijuana, I wanted to share with you a transcript of a recent conversation I had with former NBA player and cannabis entrepreneur, Al Harrington.
I believe the purpose of our drug laws should be to protect our children and our communities from violence and addiction, not to needlessly make criminals out of our fellow Americans. Our laws should be based on common sense. In the 115th and 116th Congresses I introduced bills to decriminalize marijuana. This Congress will be no different.
As Majority Leader, I will continue to push for legislation that addresses the systemic and racial inequities that have plagued our drug laws and criminal justice system for decades. I hope that in the coming months we can continue to move this conversation forward. Please keep in touch with your thoughts and opinions.
Transcript: CES Instagram Live with Al Harrington
Harrington: Hey everybody! How are you doing? Y'all know I don't go live often, but I have a guest and he's about to come on right now. Hey, Senator!
Schumer: Al, how are you doing, my man? You doing okay?
Harrington: Oh, man, I'm good, man. I'm out in Detroit trying to keep warm.
Schumer: Oh yeah. Where are you right now?
Harrington: I'm actually in Detroit right now.
Schumer: Gotcha. Well, you're close to Indiana, I guess, right? Where you played ball?
Harrington: I'm used to the cold weather. I'm from New Jersey, too, so-
Schumer: Where in Jersey are you from?
Harrington: I grew up in Orange, New Jersey.
Schumer: Got it. I know where it is. So, I was a basketball player in high school.
Harrington: Yeah, right.
Schumer: I wasn't quite as good as you. You know what our team's motto was at Madison High School?
Harrington: What was it?
Schumer: We may be small, but we're slow. I used to go around Brooklyn, my home borough, when I was a Congressman and play choose-up games. Then, when I became a Senator, I couldn't do it because everyone knew who I was and they wouldn't guard me. Oh, great move Senator. Great layup, you sure got around me.
Harrington: Well listen, I don't know what part of Brooklyn you was in where you were getting that kind of love, I've never seen people from Brooklyn be nice to anybody.
Schumer: Oh, we've got the nicest people you would ever want to meet.
Harrington: Well, hey, man, a lot of people would be surprised that I got the Senate Majority Leader sitting here talking about marijuana. So I wanted to talk to you about why you care about this issue. You know what I'm saying?
Schumer: Well, a couple of things, Al. Number one, you know I believe in freedom. Let the people do what they want. And it became pretty apparent, years ago, that all these horror stories, you know, "if you legalize marijuana crime will go up." Well, states legalized it and crime didn't go up. "If you legalize marijuana, everyone will become a big druggie." That didn't happen either. And also, the havoc it created in the minority community, and the unfairness. A young man caught with a little marijuana in his pocket gets arrested, has a criminal record for the rest of his life, can't get a good start, can't get things done. So I decided we should decriminalize it. The time has come, and there was a lot of old logic. The fact that the federal government said it's as big a crime to have marijuana as to have heroin was ridiculous. Just ridiculous. Everybody knew that. So I decided, I was the first leader from the Democrats or the Republicans to say, "let's decriminalize, let's legalize." And I'm glad I did.
Harrington: We're so happy that you did, and we're so happy that you continue to fight for that because that's a lot of the purpose around my company as well. You know it's about, you know, right the wrongs that have happened to our community, you know, in crazy proportions, and now industry that is really obviously taking off. Billions of dollars have been made, and we still don't have any representation.
Schumer: But you'll have it with me and our bill. The bill that I put in. Now we're putting it together with some other bills. It does four things: decriminalizes, lets the states do whatever they want. Number two expungement of the records. It shouldn't be that someone should carry this burden around his or her whole life, when, marijuana, it should not have been a criminal offence to begin with.
Harrington: Right.
Schumer: Number three, minority community, you know, viola, is it Viola is that your mom's name.
Harrington: My grandma.
Schumer: Grandma, isn't that nice did she did, she lived to see your success.
Harrington: Oh, she's still here. She lives in North Carolina, but you know she suffers from dementia so that's the only reason why I don't allow her to you know tell her own story, but you know, I went I just seen her a couple weeks ago and you know obviously with COVID it was really tough and, you know, I told her you know when I when I saw I was like, "Grandma, you have no idea the movement that's happening around the world, you know it's something with your name on it. And she deserves to know that you know her background was, you know, very caring woman, you know, the whole thing you know what I'm saying. So I think this is really fitting.
Schumer: And now what our bill does is it says that the tax that goes to marijuana that you know, that would be made from legalization should go into the minority community to help minority businesses to help smaller businesses. It was the minority community that suffered because marijuana had such a, you know, such a high criminal rating to be much overdone, much too broad. So we should put the money back into the minority community. I don't want to see these big tobacco companies coming in and shoving everybody out.
Harrington: Right.
Schumer: So you tell your mom if she can hear me or remember me I'm all for Viola and many more Violas.
Harrington: You just brought up an interesting point you know you know my biggest concern with, you know, federal legalization, you know, when I really think about it overall, is because you know I think that that means that FDA comes in, right? And if the FDA steps in, you know, a lot of these facilities that we spent a lot of money and energy and effort building could potentially not be compliant so like how do you see you know federalization -
Schumer: So we want our legislation to be very easy and not do that kind of stuff. And we say, look, we don't need the FDA putting all kinds of stuff in. We do, what the one thing we'd like to do is we put in some money, so that people can actually develop the breathalyzer test you know for marijuana they have it for alcohol obviously, it would be good to have it for marijuana, just like you shouldn't drive under the influence of alcohol, you probably shouldn't drive under the influence of too much marijuana, but overall we pretty much left things alone to the states. So I agree with you, if the FDA came in with a heavy hand that would undo the whole purpose of our bill. In the new bill we're putting together with a lot of different supporters, some Republican. We're gonna make sure that doesn't happen.
Harrington: Got it.
Harrington: What can a lot of our followers do to help?
Schumer: I would urge you to email, tweet, do whatever you do to contact your Senators, your congressman, to say support Schumer's effort to decriminalize and legalize. We don't have a bill number yet because we are putting a new bill together but they will know it's my bill.
Harrington: And you know, myself I just want to let you know if there is anything I can do to support you and if there is any way I can be a part of this-because, I think, to your point, it's like you want people from the industry actually sitting at the table as you try to shape and mold these bills.
Schumer: As we move this bill forward, Al, I would like to show it to you and see what you think of it. And I will tell you one more thing, I am really glad to see that the NBA stopped random testing for marijuana this year and I heard that was because of some guy named Al Harrington is that true?
Harrington: Yeah, man, you know, I worked on it because when I first came in the league I was not a smoker. So I definitely was one of the guys who looked at my teammates who smoked and thought they weren't taking their craft seriously. But now that I am educated and woke, I realized that, after having a 16 year career with multiple surgeries and having to take all the different opioids and different things like that throughout my career, I realized the power of the plant and players should have access to this plant as the alternative way to medicate a lot of the issues that we deal with.
Schumer: There was a lot of old fashioned thinking that didn't match up with medical science and we are hoping to do away with all that. And you are doing your job and thank God for ya Al.
Harrington: Like I said, anything I can do to help you push this thing forward with you, let me know. I am a phone call away.
Schumer: And maybe Al you can teach me how to do a really good jump shot too.
Harrington: That's easy but I would charge you for that.
Schumer: Well, I won't charge you for helping out Viola. That's good for America.
Harrington: Thank you so much for taking the time. It was amazing. I had a really good time.
Schumer: Let's do this again soon. I will come back on and talk about the progress that we are making in the Senate.
Harrington: Definitely, and I can tell people what I have been hearing.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
Senate Majority Leader
