Rob Sand, the Democrat who won Iowa’s gubernatorial election last week, says he plans to move forward with a proposal to legalize marijuana in the state arguing that it could generate “hundreds of millions of dollars” in annual revenue to fund public schools and other services.
“We should treat cannabis the way that we treat alcohol,” the incoming governor said on the latest episode of Iowa Press that aired on Iowa Public Television on Friday. “That’s, year one, a smaller figure maybe 54 million but after that, hundreds of millions of dollars.”
When asked how he would get his marijuana legalization plan and other priorities past the Republican-controlled legislature, Sand suggested that bipartisan and bicameral compromise and dealmaking would be key.
“Any budget the legislature passes is going to have to have my support for it to become law,” he said. “Any budget that I want to become law is going to have to be passed by the legislature, right?”
“This is part of why I think that Iowans were moving my direction in this campaign. They want us to be working together, and they just made a decision that forces us to do that,” the Democrat said. “And I think that’s a good thing.
So there’s always going to be room, and there’s going to be a reality where we have to negotiate.”
“I think it’s going to be the stuff that the vast majority of Iowans can agree are good. Now, there will be plenty of people out on the far right and the far left that are disappointed by whatever we do. I think the 80, 70 percent of us that are somewhere in the middle will probably look at it and say that’s good,” he said on Iowa Press.
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