Cory Booker is making his efforts at marijuana legalization part of his freshly begun presidential campaign, the New Jersey senator said in a radio interview Friday as he made his White House bid official.
Speaking to the Tom Joyner Morning Show, Booker included his marijuana policy in a pitch for what he called “radical empathy” in the U.S.
“Folks are feeling left out, folks are feeling left behind,” said the New Jersey Democrat, the latest to throw his hat in the expanding ring of presidential contenders.
See: Here are the nearly two dozen Democrats running for president or in the mix.
In 2017, Booker introduced a bill that would have decriminalized marijuana at the federal level, and would also have encouraged states to legalize it if their laws were shown to have a disproportionate effect on people of color or low-income individuals.
Booker, who is African-American, announced his candidacy on the first day of Black History Month.
An exchange-traded fund of cannabis stocks MJ, +2.62% was trading about 3% higher in early-afternoon action on Friday.