At a campaign rally on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump revealed that he favors letting states decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
While taking questions at the Nugget (heh) Convention Center in Sparks, Nevada, outside of Reno, Trump reaffirmed his strong support for giving sick people access to medical marijuana. As far as legalizing pot in general, he said, “I really believe we should leave it up to the states.”
Nevada recently legalized medical marijuana and an initiative to regulate and tax the drug like alcohol will be on the state ballot next year. Colorado, which hosted the third Republican debate on Wednesday night, legalized recreational marijuana in 2014.
At the CPAC conference in June, Trump said he opposed Colorado’s law, which he insinuated was causing “some big problems.” On Thursday, he also opined that Colorado’s experiment with legal weed was “not going exactly trouble-free” and should be studied.
Trump, who claims not to drink alcohol, is no fan of drugs but has expressed a range of opinions on drug policy. Way back in 1990, he expressed support for legalizing drugs and using the tax revenue to fund anti-drug education initiatives.
The Donald is not the first presidential hopeful to toke — ahem — take up this issue. On Wednesday, Democrat Bernie Sanders came out in favor of fully decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level, paving the way for states to regulate it as they do alcohol and cigarettes.
No word yet on whether Trump will take Snoop Dogg up on his offer to smoke him out:
