Biden’s Marijuana Pardons Have been Only for Present
Keep in mind when President Biden made an enormous present of pardoning hundreds of individuals with federal marijuana convictions? Keep in mind the press conferences, the speeches about how “no person ought to be in jail for easy possession,” and the guarantees of reform? Yeah, about that.
Seems it was all theater. And just lately revealed paperwork show it.
A newly uncovered Biden administration memo reveals that whereas Biden was publicly pardoning individuals and speaking about marijuana reform, his Division of Justice was quietly implementing insurance policies that might make it more durable to truly cease prosecuting marijuana instances. The memo required federal prosecutors to hunt higher-up approval earlier than declining to pursue marijuana prices—successfully making certain that marijuana prosecutions would proceed regardless of the general public pardons.
Then Trump took workplace and rescinded even these minimal restrictions, making it clear that the federal battle on marijuana is again on with a vengeance. However this is the factor: Biden’s memo was by no means actual reform to start with. It was designed to seem like progress whereas sustaining the established order.
Let’s break down this betrayal and why the complete federal strategy to marijuana is an costly, hypocritical waste of everybody’s time.
What Biden Mentioned He Was Doing
In October 2022, President Biden issued a proclamation pardoning all prior federal offenses of straightforward marijuana possession. He additionally referred to as on governors to situation comparable pardons for state offenses and directed the Division of Well being and Human Companies and the Legal professional Normal to evaluation marijuana’s classification underneath federal legislation.
The announcement was accompanied by hovering rhetoric about justice and reform: “Sending individuals to jail for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated individuals for conduct that many states now not prohibit,” Biden mentioned. “Felony information for marijuana possession have additionally imposed useless boundaries to employment, housing, and academic alternatives.”
It sounded transformative. Media shops ran headlines about Biden’s “historic” marijuana pardons. Advocates cautiously celebrated what appeared like a step in the correct route.
However as with most issues in politics, the satan was within the particulars. And people particulars reveal that Biden’s pardons had been far much less vital than they appeared.
What Biden Truly Did (And Did not Do)
First, let’s discuss who really benefited from Biden’s pardons. The reply? Virtually no person who was really in jail.
Biden’s pardons solely utilized to federal easy possession prices. This is the issue: just about no person is in federal jail for easy possession of marijuana. Federal marijuana prosecutions usually contain trafficking, cultivation, or possession with intent to distribute—all of which had been explicitly excluded from the pardons.
In keeping with the U.S. Sentencing Fee, there have been zero individuals in federal jail serving sentences solely for easy marijuana possession on the time of Biden’s announcement. Zero. The pardons affected roughly 6,500 individuals, however that they had already served their sentences. The pardons cleared their information, which is significant, but it surely’s not remotely the identical as liberating individuals from jail.
So Biden acquired credit score for “liberating hundreds” when he really freed nobody. That is the primary con.
The Memo That Revealed the Reality
Now we get to the just lately revealed half that reveals simply how cynical Biden’s “reform” actually was.
Whereas Biden was publicly pardoning previous marijuana offenses and speaking about reform, his Division of Justice issued a memo in January 2023 requiring federal prosecutors to hunt approval from higher-ups earlier than declining to pursue marijuana prices. Let that sink in for a second.
The administration that was supposedly reforming marijuana coverage applied a system designed to make sure marijuana prosecutions would proceed. The memo primarily mentioned: “If you happen to’re eager about not prosecuting a marijuana case, you want permission out of your bosses first.”
That is the other of reform. That is institutionalizing the established order whereas pretending to help change.
The memo additionally directed prosecutors to proceed implementing federal marijuana legal guidelines “notably with respect to large-scale business enterprises,” which sounds affordable till you understand that many state-legal marijuana companies might fall underneath that class. The federal authorities was sustaining its authority to go after authorized hashish companies whereas Biden was getting credit score for being pro-reform.
What Biden’s Companies Have been Instructed to Do
Whereas Biden talked about reform, this is what his businesses had been really doing:
The Division of Justice: As we have mentioned, required approval earlier than declining marijuana prosecutions. Continued to implement federal prohibition. Maintained marijuana’s Schedule I standing all through Biden’s complete time period regardless of his supposed directive to evaluation it.
The Drug Enforcement Administration: Continued raids on state-legal marijuana companies. Maintained boundaries to marijuana analysis. Dragged its ft on rescheduling, finally proposing the half-measure of Schedule III as an alternative of descheduling completely.
The Division of Well being and Human Companies: Beneficial Schedule III standing—a transfer that might primarily profit pharmaceutical firms whereas sustaining federal prohibition for everybody else.
The FDA: Continued to deal with marijuana as an unlawful substance with no accepted medical use, regardless of overwhelming proof on the contrary and 38 states with medical marijuana applications.
In different phrases, enterprise as regular. The businesses tasked with implementing Biden’s supposed marijuana reforms spent 4 years sustaining prohibition, simply with higher PR.
Trump Rescinds Even the Minimal Restrictions
Then Trump took workplace and even Biden’s performative restrictions acquired tossed. The Justice Division underneath Trump rescinded the memo requiring higher-up approval for declining marijuana prosecutions. However this is the twist: this does not really change a lot as a result of the memo was by no means about lowering prosecutions—it was about sustaining them whereas showing progressive.
What Trump’s motion does sign is that federal marijuana enforcement is again with none pretense of restraint. Federal prosecutors in Trump’s DOJ have already introduced plans to ramp up marijuana prosecutions, notably on federal lands. The Legal professional Normal has made it clear that marijuana is considered as a “hazard,” and so they’re going after easy possession instances with renewed vigor.
So we have gone from Biden’s faux reform to Trump’s open hostility. Neither strategy serves justice, public well being, or frequent sense. Each waste large quantities of assets prosecuting individuals for consuming a plant that is authorized in 24 states and medically authorized in 38.
Why This Is All Bullshit
Let’s step again and acknowledge the absurdity of this complete state of affairs.
We’re spending federal assets—taxpayer cash—prosecuting individuals for marijuana possession. Not trafficking. Not distribution to minors. Possession. Having a plant in your pocket.
In the meantime, alcohol—which is way extra harmful than marijuana by each goal measure—is authorized, marketed, and offered on each nook. Let’s examine:
Deaths: Alcohol kills roughly 140,000 People yearly. Marijuana kills zero individuals per 12 months from overdose. Zero.
Dependancy: About 15% of alcohol customers develop alcohol use dysfunction. Lower than 9% of marijuana customers develop any type of dependence, and that dependence is way much less extreme.
Violence: Alcohol is concerned in roughly 40% of violent crimes. Marijuana is related to decreased aggression and violence.
Well being Affect: Alcohol causes liver illness, coronary heart illness, most cancers, mind injury, and quite a few different situations. Marijuana’s well being impacts are comparatively minimal, with most analysis displaying advantages for situations like power ache, PTSD, and epilepsy.
Social Value: Alcohol-related hurt prices the U.S. financial system an estimated $249 billion yearly. Marijuana’s social prices are a fraction of that and proceed to lower in authorized states.
So clarify to me once more why we’re criminalizing marijuana whereas alcohol flows freely? The one logical rationalization is that our drug insurance policies don’t have anything to do with precise hurt discount and all the pieces to do with management, company pursuits, and sustaining prohibition equipment.
The Hypocrisy of “Consenting Adults”
This is what actually grinds my gears: we’re supposedly a free nation. We allegedly imagine in particular person liberty and private autonomy. We’re instructed always that America is the land of the free, the place adults could make their very own decisions.
However apparently, that freedom does not prolong to what you place in your personal physique. You possibly can drink your self to loss of life—that is your proper. You possibly can smoke cigarettes understanding they will doubtless kill you—private selection. You possibly can eat your self into weight problems and diabetes—freedom, child.
However smoke marijuana? That is the place we draw the road. That requires federal intervention, felony penalties, and lifelong information that destroy employment prospects and damage lives.
The inconsistency is frustrating. Both we imagine in bodily autonomy for consenting adults or we do not. Both we respect individuals’s proper to make their very own decisions about substances or we do not. You possibly can’t declare to be the land of the free whereas arresting individuals for consuming a plant that is objectively safer than authorized alternate options.
The Waste of Assets
Let’s discuss what this prohibition really prices us.
Federal marijuana enforcement prices billions of {dollars} yearly. That is billions that may very well be spent on training, healthcare, infrastructure, or actually something that really advantages society. As an alternative, we’re spending it on arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating individuals whose solely crime is possessing a plant.
Federal prosecutors have restricted assets. Each hour spent prosecuting marijuana possession is an hour not spent on violent crime, white-collar fraud, human trafficking, or different critical offenses. Each jail cell occupied by a marijuana offender is a cell not accessible for an precise harmful felony.
The chance price is staggering. And for what? To keep up a prohibition that almost all of People oppose and that has demonstrably failed to cut back marijuana use, availability, or hurt?
The Actual Agenda
So why do Biden and Trump each keep this charade? Why the efficiency of reform from one and the outright hostility from the opposite, when each end in continued prohibition?
Comply with the cash. The pharmaceutical trade loses billions when individuals select marijuana over their capsules. Non-public prisons revenue from marijuana arrests. Legislation enforcement businesses get federal funding tied to drug battle enforcement. Politicians get marketing campaign contributions from the entire above.
Marijuana prohibition is a jobs program for legislation enforcement, a revenue middle for prisons, and a market safety scheme for pharmaceutical firms. That is why it persists regardless of overwhelming public help for legalization and regardless of marijuana being objectively safer than authorized alternate options.
Biden’s pardons had been by no means about justice—they had been about showing progressive whereas sustaining the worthwhile establishment. Trump’s crackdown is not about public security—it is about signaling toughness to his base whereas serving the identical company pursuits.
The Sticky Backside Line
Biden’s marijuana pardons had been political theater designed to earn progressive credibility with out really altering something. He pardoned individuals who had been already out of jail whereas his DOJ applied insurance policies to make sure prosecutions continued. He talked about reform whereas his businesses maintained prohibition.
Trump’s rescinding of even these minimal restrictions simply makes the hypocrisy extra apparent. No less than Trump is not pretending to be progressive on this situation—he is brazenly hostile to marijuana reform, and his administration is ramping up prosecutions accordingly.
However this is the factor: each approaches are essentially improper. Whether or not it is Biden’s faux reform or Trump’s open hostility, the outcome is identical—continued criminalization of a substance that is safer than alcohol, imprisonment of individuals whose solely crime is private use of a plant, and big waste of federal assets on failed prohibition.
We’re consenting adults allegedly dwelling in a free nation. We will select to drink alcohol regardless of its risks. We will select numerous different authorized substances that carry dangers. However in some way, marijuana stays criminalized, prosecuted, and stigmatized.
The pardons had been a present. The memo was a betrayal. The rescinding was anticipated. And the complete federal strategy to marijuana stays a hypocritical, costly, unjust waste of everybody’s time.
Till we have now precise legalization—not rescheduling, not half-measures, not performative pardons—nothing will change. The machine will hold grinding, the arrests will proceed, and politicians from each events will hold pretending they care about reform whereas sustaining prohibition.
That is the true story Biden’s pardons inform: in America, even progress is usually for present.
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