Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

I don't use cannabis. If it were to go away tomorrow, my life wouldn't change one bit.

I am absolutely thrilled with this blanket pardon.

Rephrasing the statement slightly, like:

I am pardoning additional individuals who may continue to experience the unnecessary collateral consequences of a conviction for simple possession of beer, attempted simple possession of beer, or use of beer.

and it sounds utterly obvious, and ludicrous that it ever would have been an issue in the first place. I love a good stout or porter, and I can walk into just about any grocery store, flash my ID, hand over some cash, and walk out with a bottle of drugs that's caused far more societal harm than cannabis ever did. That I can drink a beer in public and no one bats an eye, while my neighbors could smoke a joint in their own house and go to jail for it, is insanity.

Good on you, Mr. President, for making life better for a whole lot of Americans.

100%. The War on Drugs was always in contradiction of the spirit of the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition.

It needs to be formally acknowledged as such, and further as fundamentally unconstitutional, but these kinds of victories take time. At least that so-called "War" is destroying fewer lives now.

How else was the government to continue to systemically hold down minorities in this country post-Civil Rights Act, while simultaneously enriching the Military Industrial Complex by flooding local law enforcement with military equipment paid for by US taxpayers?

You act as if they couldn't have gone about this 10,000 different ways.

This worked because it's what the people wanted - in response to the 70s - not because some evil scheming overlord.

It's pretty clear what certain people wanted in response to the 70s stemming from the rise of minority groups like the Black Panthers or the American Indian Movement trying to use their newly-enacted rights to fight oppression. Even the NRA was pro gun control when the Black Panthers were using the 2A for open-carrying to protect black Americans.

If it was truly about marijuana use, then when usage rates for white and black Americans are effectively the same, black people would not be 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.

black people would not be 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession than white people

While on its face true, this isn’t taking into account things like recidivism or multiple charges.

That’s to say the average black person has more priors and is more likely to have multiple charges when charged compared to the average white.

I think the thing you said about priors is repeating a talking point about prosecution or sentencing disparities that isn't particularly relevant in the context of an arrest.

I have no idea what you mean about multiple charges.

I think the thing you said about priors is repeating a talking point about prosecution or sentencing disparities that isn't particularly relevant in the context of an arrest.

Arrests don’t occur in a vacuum. The prior convictions are known and are a factor.

I have no idea what you mean about multiple charges.

Person A is smoking pot and is arrested. Person B is smoking pot wearing a bloody t shirt with a knife in his hand. If you’re more likely to engage in criminal activity, you’re more likely to be smoking pot while engaging in criminal activity (again, on average).

Yes, and if person A and B are white American and African American, the AA smoker is much more likely to be actually arrested, rather than given a warning, etc. at the officer's discretion.

Dog whistles about unknowns like previous convictions or criminal history, and fictitious scenarios attempting to justify your point, don't actually help you the way you think they do.

If you're ignorant enough to think there isn't a disproportionately racist response in the WoD and the application of anti-cannabis laws on the citizenry, you need to open your eyes.

Attempting to claim "the prior convictions are known and are a factor" without admitting the disproportionate affect race has on such convictions being sought in the first place, is ignorant.

"Arrests don't occur in a vacuum." - If you deliberately and willfully ignore the existence of racism in the policing and justice systems, then you're not considering all the factors - and are being misinformed at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.

For example, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67214409 - a world championship medallist and Olympian sprinter were arrested on entirely fictitious charges of having suspected drugs and weapons - with no basis, and with no evidence of such items being found.

If you can't see how the factor of race fits into the application of these laws against certain citizens more, that's your failure - it's nothing new.

None of what you say counters their point. At the end of the day African Americans commit a disproportionate amount of crime, it would be a miracle if they didn't have more prior convictions on average.

Citation needed.

All the stats we have focus around arrests, charges, convictions, so any systemic racism in enforcement is included.

African Americans being arrested more per capita for a crime is not inherently the same as committing more crime per capita.

I have a hard time figuring how you could ever prove your claim, because how do you show who committed crimes that were either not suspects, or crimes that weren’t discovered or reported?

Simple, crime correlates with poverty, and African Americans are disproportionally poor. It would take a miracle for them not to commit more crime.

They're trying to denounce the racial aspect of likelihood of being targeted/prosecuted, by going "African Americans are more likely to be involved in crime already" - which is also inherent on racial biases and profiling in the police and criminal justice systems.

The point is that they can't jump to racist dog-whistles and then pretend like race isn't a factor in targeting to begin with.

If you’re more likely to engage in criminal activity, you’re more likely to be smoking pot while engaging in criminal activity (again, on average).

I think a slightly simpler way of putting your point is that Black people are more likely to be serious criminals than white people. Am I missing some nuance?

But if say, one group was more targeted they would have more priors and more multiple charges, isn’t it just a feedback loop?

Or say, one group has historical disadvantage which causes them to be disproportionately poor which causes them to be more likely themselves to commit crime and/or live in high crime areas. Which then leads to an increased police presence and, therefore, an increased chance of police interaction.

There's no need to add in the practically unprovable presence of deliberate targeting when other explanations sufficiently account for disparities.

No, it's fact, not conspiracy theory.

"You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon

The part about "enriching the military industrial complex" is certainly a conspiracy theory though. The MIC has only ever shrunk in importance in the American economy, and giving people their used products is like the opposite of enriching them.

Normalizing the use of the equipment guarantees additional future domestic purchases, subscriptions, and other support revenue.

Does it really? Do people really think "Ah but of course the military needs more money, it's given a good use, since the police get it afterwards"?

That’s not even an uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote.

I was talking about the domestic law enforcement continuing to use the stuff they got for cheap/federally subsidized, or free, because “it’s effective.”

They generally don't actually use it or have a use for it though, that's part of the problem. And I don't think buying replacement tires for an MRAP is a lot of subscription revenue.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tell...

Please tell me more about Congress spending money on equipment the military doesn't need or want isn't corporate welfare for Defense Contractors.

Eisenhower even warned us to such actions in 1961, and literally if there was ever someone who would know: it would be a man that was on both sides as a high-ranking general and President. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote

This is one of many many sources. I'm not willing to put together a comprehensive list of something that is so well known.

Families often raise a concern about how they never knew member X to be a baddie (eg The Golden State Killer). This is not a compelling refutation. Whether anyone can be wrong or lying about anything, is equally weak.

The man said it. I have no doubt.

You're missing the point.

All that was popular as well.

This wasn't some evil mastermind scheme to enrich the military industrial complex.

It was run-of-the-mill everyday politics.

The world isn't fair.

That doesn't mean we're all being fooled by some evil genius mastermind pulling the strings we can't see.

It just means that people don't care about what's right or wrong, mostly - just what they want.

Nixon was certainly an enigma compared to other US Presidents: Advocated for "Universal Healthcare" by basically mandating the Federal government to provide stop loss reinsurance to employers and creating a marketplace for poor people with income adjusted premiums... sounds familiar.

Created the EPA

Warmonger but hated by the CIA/FBI

I don't think anyone wanted the sweeping disinformation campaign about marijuana that flooded both the airwaves and law-enforcement training syllabuses that we got from the federal government.

It is hard to expect a republic to make sensible decisions when it's citizens are being actively misinformed. It is also hard to not impute malice on people who push blatantly false information.

Good points.

It does make one wonder why, given the history of known deception, many people have recently seemed to abandon all critical thought and fervently believe whatever the government tells them.

It’s very hard to read this article without concluding that Nixon was such a scheming overlord leading the charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

Richard Nixon is widely recognized as said scheming overlord, with the drug policies he enacted.

Cannabis laws applied to all Americans.

At the discretion of both law enforcement officers and prosecutors.

Do you have evidence that cannabis laws were enforced disproportionately?

sure, let me spend my Saturday going on Google for you, to find the overwhelming evidence that has been gathered for the past several decades, which you somehow missed.

or claim to have missed.

They are not enforced the same way to all, though.

"Application" depends purely on enforcement and the discretion of (a) the arresting officer, and then (b) the justice system further down the line.

You can't deny that the WoD and cannabis prosecutions in particular have disproportionately targeted African Americans and other minorities.

Measured by annual average alcohol consumption in the US before and after prohibition, the 21st amendment was a huge success.

I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy. Afterward, individual mandatory punishment/rehab for those who abuse drugs/alcohol and harm themselves and others should be the norm.

Measured by annual average alcohol consumption in the US before and after prohibition, the 21st amendment was a huge success.

That begs the question by assuming that's a good measurement. Is it? Since prohibition ended, has alcohol become so uniquely destructive here (compared to all other alcohol-allowing societies) that we've wanted to ban it again? I'm of the strong opinion that it's not.

I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy.

Add that to the long list of things I agree with in principle, but reject in practice. Our timeline of such experiments is a series of social disasters.

In any case, I think there a clearly distinct categories of drugs. I don't want to live around meth users, because drug itself makes them paranoid, irritable, and hard to be near. I couldn't care less if my next door neighbor smokes weed.

You likely live around well-adjusted prescription meth users and don't know it.

In the same house, even! There's a huge difference between a low dose taken under a doctor's supervision and a recreational dose taken as large and frequently as desired.

I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy.

OK, but we passed a constitutional amendment saying the opposite, and the so-called "War on Drugs" operates in defiance of the spirit of that amendment.

And the 13th amendment, kinda.

It goes against the spirit of it but not the word of it.

The unfortunate part of the 13th amendment was the addendum that slavery wasn't slavery if it was part of the prison system. Which had the effect that those who wanted to continue the slavery system figured out "Oh, we'll just criminalize being black, and then we're legal again!"

that's caused far more societal harm than cannabis ever did.

Yes, I think this indisputably so. However, the more widely cannabis is used the greater the harms seem to be.

In absolute numbers, the harm from weed is increasing as more people use it. As a rate, it’s a rounding error compared to alcohol.

For instance[1]:

“According to the 2022 Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 29.5 million people ages 12 and older (10.5% in this age group) had AUD in the past year.”

Compare that to[2]:

“The incidence rate of cannabis-induced psychosis increased steadily from 2.8 per 100 000 person years in 2006 to 6.1 per 100 000 person years in 2016.”

You’re orders of magnitude more likely to suffer harm from using alcohol than cannabis. I’m saying that as someone who enjoys the occasional drink but doesn’t use weed; I don’t have skin in the game.

[1] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...

[2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31839011/

Fair enough, but youths seem to overdo everything. And alcohol is one of those things you can overdo.

I'm curious as to where the break-even is. e.g. one joint per day is as harmful as 2.5 beers per day.

Also a good point.

You're right my local bodega has been running out of chips and cookies at an alarming rate. Things are getting dangerous out there.

this is true, but the harm is so small (at least when compared to alcohol) that it shouldn't meet any threshold for prohibition nowadays

Well, not all states have drugs laws that are absurd. At least one decent thing about California, Oregon, and Washington is some sensibility about legalizing or at least not prosecuting non-dangerous drugs. But, sad to say the ultra religious/conservative states are still stuck in legacy reasoning and it will take generations to change minds. And yes, alcohol is much worse than marijuana, shrooms, LSD.

Hey, let's not forget that, somehow, Mississippi has decriminalized possession for a very long time now. And more than 75% of the voters wanted medicinal marijuana. Now the state officials continue to brutally enforce their morals against medical patients, having already dragged out the legislation to provide a legal framework for medicinal use, but that's regrettably hardly unique to medical marijuana patients.

Decriminalizing drugs and other progressive changes to law enforcement have led to some problems in San Francisco and Portland. There’s a real sense of the breakdown of social order.

I'm writing this from California, so I was using "neighbors" expansively to mean Americans in general. My experience in California has shaped how I see the argument. I grew up in the Midwest and heard a million reasons why weed was a ticket straight to hell. Now that I live somewhere that it's completely legal and normal for your average person to possess and use it, I can see that, literally, none of the dire warnings I'd been taught have come to pass.

California legalized weed, people who wanted to use it started admitting that they use it, and... that's about it. Nothing bad happened. If anything, I know people who switched from alcohol to weed in the spirit of harm reduction, and they seem to be better for it.

The problem is they really just helped out the black market. They didn't legalize anything. They stopped prosecuting small amounts.

Re: alcohol, there are people with Minor in Possession charges on their records. It would be good to expunge those, too.

I've always taken it for granted that stuff like MIPs on your record get sealed or expunged once you hit 21. IMO it's silly to have it be a mark on your record even temporarily, but insane to me that some states don't automatically expunge misdemeanors for kids.

My MIP was a factor during the background check for my security clearance in my early 20s. Since then nobody has cared.

The counterargument is that these people are punished not for carrying weed, but for breaking the law.

The law could say "nobody shall wear a red tshirt", and I think it would then be morally okay to arrest and punish anyone who continues to wear red tshirts.

Anyone not okay with the red tshirt law can go get the law changed through the usual democratic process. But if they just ignore the law and wear a red tshirt anyway, then punish them.

So you don't consider civil disobedience to be an appropriate way to agitate for change?

Does something else being worse (alcohol) but acceptable mean that an alternative (cannabis) should be acceptable?

If alcohol was not already widely (ab)used in a county would they be wrong to prohibit it?

(Note not meant in any form of malice, intended as probing questions for discussion)

"Should be acceptable" is the wrong way to look at it. "Should be illegal" is the question that should be answered.

There's a subtle but important distinction between

Alcohol is allowed, so cannabis should be allowed.

and

Alcohol is not illegal, so cannabis should not be illegal.

Our legal system is a default-allow denylist: unless a law says you can't do something, you can. The government doesn't grant permission. It removes it.

So because the government hasn't made the case that we should ban alcohol, I think it's on them to prove that cannabis is somehow worse to justify its banning.

I don't disagree that this is good for those involved or affected.

However, nothing stops the same from happening to someone tomorrow. The past several administrations have been relying too heavily on executive fiat for the optics.

The DEA needs to reschedule it. Anything else is at best a band-aid, if not simple lip service to buy votes.

Rumor is it’s a done deal and they’re just weaponizing it for the election. I despise this is where we’ve come in political theater.

Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side? A bit unaware in terms of US politics, but up here since legalization, life is exactly as it was before — people who smoked just continue to smoke but legally, people who don’t… don’t.

The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen. HHS (one federal agency) has already recommended it to DEA (another federal agency), which has the final say unless Congress were to affirmatively intervene.

With that said, they aren’t proposing to grant federal legality to the state-legal recreational marijuana market. They are planning to reclassify it from Schedule I (no recognized medical use) to Schedule III (the same category as anabolic steroids or testosterone and less restricted than Adderall), so the proposed federally legal way to get it would need a prescription and dispensing by a pharmacy or doctor.

One thing the President might be able to do is to remove legally-sourced marijuana use as a disqualification for holding a US security clearance. It is also disqualifying for other Federal background checks related to buying handguns. Maybe the change from Schedule I to Schedule III would do this automatically.

"One thing the President might be able to do is to remove legally-sourced marijuana use as a disqualification for holding a US security clearance."

Just to clarify, current use of marijuana is a disqualification for a security clearance. Past use of marijuana is not a disqualifier. When I was a younger man I used marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine and MDMA. Several of them very frequently. I disclosed all of this prior use and was able to get multiple security clearances through the years.

I no longer have nor will in the future have a security clearance so I now enjoy my legal weed.

> The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen.

The entire theme of this thread is "nothing stops the same from happening tomorrow". One president can order the DEA to reschedule it, and then the next can undo that work just as easily. We need a law, not an executive fiat. Most of the country is in favor of legalization, including most republican voters, so you'd think it would be easy to get the house on board, had it not been co-opted by right-wing extremists.

Under current federal law the President doesn't have the authority to simply order rescheduling. There is a process that must be followed and substantial changes to that process would require an Act of Congress.

DEA is not controlled by the house.

Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress. The executive branch could always just stop enforcing the laws passed by the legislative branch, but I thought we wanted less executive overreach.

Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress.

Marijuana can be rescheduled without an act of Congress; what is on the table is not full legalization (which, AFAIK, could also be done within the executive, because IIRC drugs can be descheduled by the same process for rescheduling) but rescheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III.

And by "on the table", I mean the first step -- FDA recommendation to DEA -- has already been done.

The house is incapable of passing the most basic of funding for national security to let Ukraine win the war, let alone something even slightly controversial

Unpacking your statement it seems like you believe two things:

1. That Ukraine winning against Russia is part of United States national security.

2. That the United States providing funding to Ukraine would enable them to win against Russia.

Is that correct?

Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side?

The House doesn't have to pass it, resecheduling is an executive action. (Congress could act to block it by legislation, and there is a streamlined process for doing that for reg changes in the Congressional Review Act but, it would take both Houses and -- since presumably the President will support his own administration's regulation -- sufficient supermajorities to overcome a veto.)

Do you have a source for this rumor?

The DEA needs to reschedule it.

The DEA needs to have this authority rescinded. They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.

It's the federal version of the Siebert strategy and it's completely injust.

They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.

If that's their logic then someone there can't do math. Between fentanyl, other opioids, and meth they have plenty to do.

Meth is historically misclassified, too. Why are we drawing the line at marijuana?

If we lower the scheduling of opioids to Schedule IV, fentanyl usage in the United States would drop almost entirely within a month. Importing clean prescription drugs from other countries would have low enough risk that the reward would be easily met. Odds are, it would also undercut wider organized drug crime.

You may find this article in The Economist worth a read:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/10/12/joe-biden-is-to...

First, I don't draw the line at marijuana. Notice how many drugs I didn't list there.

Second, stepping down from fent to heroin, which I think is what you're implying, is not going to happen that fast and frankly the way you phrased this whitewashes an entire series of events that happened that gave fentanyl the dominance that it has as a street drug; the prescription pill to fentanyl pipeline is one built from a cost and strength. For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.

The scheduling of the drug is irrelevant to the problem that there are and will be people who illegally manufacture and sell meth and fent. The DEA has plenty of those people to go after, even if we legalize and regulate every drug today. Why? Cost. The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.

OP is technically incorrect that rescheduling alone would solve the fentanyl problem, but not for the reasons you state.

For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.

Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin because of supply-side constraints: specifically, fentanyl is produced in larger quantities for pharmaceutical purposes, and the illegal markets are structured in a way that promotes the distribution of fentanyl over the distribution of heroin. However, that does not mean that fentanyl is inherently cheaper in an abstract sense. If legal restrictions were lifted, both fentanyl and heroin would be dramatically cheaper than either one is today.

This is, incidentally, another argument in favor of maintenance programs. Almost all of the indirect harms associated with illicit drug use, and many of the direct ones, are a consequence of the legal status and the expense (both financial and nonfinancial) associated with them.

Clinical trials present overwhelming evidence that, when provided with a low-cost, pharmaceutical grade supply of heroin, users are able to hold down stable jobs, maintain permanenent housing, etc., all things that they previously struggled with due to having to spend so much time, effort, and money in order to address what is fundamentally a medical issue for them.

The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.

This is more or less the "gateway drug" theory, and it's simply incorrect. There is no "pipeline" of stimulants, and to the extent that one can even be argued to exist, methamphetamine is not the "final stop" in one.

"Gateway drug theory" has to do with going from one class of drugs to another. That is not what I described. I described usage within a single class of drugs that has to do with chemically addictive properties, strength, and cost dictating the choice of the next drug.

I can see your argument about cost, but I think it ignores that, for instance, tranq is now being used in combination with fent. The reason for that isn't cost, it's entirely strength and chemically addictive properties. I think ignoring those kind of factors falls squarely outside of harm reduction. Where your argument with cost runs foul is in states like California where the legalization and subsequent regulation of the drug shot it's cost up. I'd argue marijuana probably doesn't need that kind of regulation, but chemically addictive substances I think do.

I think you are mischaracterizing the emergence of tranq.

"Xylazine proliferated as a response to the shorter fentanyl highs, with drug sellers using it to extend the high & mimic a traditional heroin experience."

https://twitter.com/SyringeAccess/status/1626623755329097728...

No, that's saying exactly what I am. It's increasing the potency of the drug. The DEA report says the same, although it also mentions xylazine is cheaper than the market price of fent: https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2022-12/The%20Growin...

Calling it “for optics” is downplaying the severity of the situation. The reason presidents rely so much on executive fiat is because our actual legislative system has paralyzed itself with partisan politics, gerrymandering, and the filibuster.

Obviously it’s intentional that it’s hard to pass things, and legitimately controversial things should be difficult to pass (and shouldn’t happen by executive fiat), but there are 2nd and 3rd order interests overriding what should be the 1st order interest of effective legislation.

Among these 2nd/3rd order interests: not looking bad to your party, making the other party look bad to their constituents, not upsetting some specific demagogues, not losing personal or party power at all costs, winning dunks in social media, looking good for the camera, ensuring that no third party could emerge, ensuring that if the other party gains power that they are incapable of exercising it, etc

The problem with blaming Congress is that the harms could be easily mitigated by the DEA changing the scheduling, which was my point.

Rumor has it that is in the works, but the fact that it has taken so long starts and ends with the executive office.

That said, Congress decriminalizing it entirely is definitely something that is going to take too long, and will also be entirely the fault of Congress.

DEA rescheduling would be the "executive fiat" and is more undo-able than pardons.

The DEA is entirely under the control of the executive. So if you want a more permanent solution, the only one is legislative, and that is extremely unlikely to happen even if there were extremely broad public support.

If we can get 2/3 of the state legislatures to agree, and 3/4 of them to ratify we can amend the constitution without Congress via a Constitutional Convention.

Still long odds but we technically don't HAVE to do it with Congress.

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/artic...

Unfortunately the people closest to achieving this are openly wannabe theocrats

If we could do that, then we'd have an easy congressional majority to do it through congress.

Constitutional amendment is far harder than congressional legislation.

As I said, I don't mind the pardon for those already affected... the problem is it doesn't do anything for someone who is charged tomorrow.

Rescheduling buys more time, and unlike other executive orders, is actually in line with the intent of Congress via the controlled substances act.

The optics, for a modern democratic republic, aren’t even that fantastic: pardons and proclamations are the acts of Kings. Democracies change laws through debate, legislation, and the voting by the representatives of the people.

I hope this pardon doesn’t dilute the will for more substantive drug policy reform.

The problem is that the US has difficulty operating as a modern democracy in general.

Yeah sure, I agree with you that proclamations and executive orders are inherently vulnerable to the whims of whomever happens to hold the office and have no place in a democracy.

But the legislative branch, as it currently operates, is not much different. In practice it results in huge pendulum swings and deadlocks, making every 2 years (because midterms) a nail biting event for the populous because hard fought rights and legislation can be undone in the blink of an eye.

As someone who grew up in a coalition country, it’s saddening to see how people around me here in the US are constantly in a state of anxiety, filled with despair like someone who’s awaiting the return of an abusive spouse from work, wondering what will happen this time.

If we somehow could get rid of the FPTP system in our legislative system, then we can rid ourselves from the two party system. Not only will this significantly lessen things like gerrymandering, and the power of lobbying, but it would force parties to form a coalition because it’s less likely that one single party holds the majority of seats.

Parties would have to actually debate each other and try to convince each other, make concessions on all sides, in order to form a coalition.

The result of this is a more steady course in government policy, with sweeping pendulum swings being rarer and the changes being made being more nuanced.

Subsequently the citizenry doesn’t have to be on high alert 24/7 and the country can function more like a modern democracy.

And next thing in the agenda would be judicial reform.

Until then, both the legislative branch and the executive branch will subject us to whims and other pendulum swings.

It will probably set the stage for it.

High officials have pardon power in a great many democratic republics. And when the country has a parliamentary system and government is led by the prime minister, sometimes pardon power rests with the president whose position is seen as aloof from all the debate and strife in parliament.

I try to look at this pardon as a quick, easy, and obvious way he can use his limited power to improve people's lives.

Getting the DEA to reschedule it would involve more time and more influence than direct power.

That said, I think he should do both, AND that issuing this pardon may double as a good way of influencing the DEA.

Does he control the federal agency? He would appoint the leadership

I don't know about the power of appointment there and it's limitations. Regardless, that's still an influence move. It's either trying to influence the existing people in power via threat of unemployment, or influencing potential replacements with a promise of employment.

Wait. The DEA sets the "scheduling" of drugs? I always thought it was Congress and/or the White House.

Congress set the initial scheduling of some drugs, and set a process for updating the schedules within the executive branch going forward, with the DEA (in statute, the Attorney-General, but in practice within Justice its the DEA doing the main work) playing the key role (HHS in statute -- via the FDA in practice-- plays a mandatory role in advance of the decision, which is controlling in the case of a currently non-controlled drug that HHS recommends not controlling, but advisory in, I believe, all other cases.)

If the ATF can announce rescheduling of a constitutionally protected right based on random features, surely the DEA can do so as well

It’s true, but every step towards eventual (and IMO inevitable) legalization should be celebrated.

I don't support a train barreling toward derailment just because I prefer the view from a moving train.

If there is a single negative consequence from this pardon, some sort of Willy Horton moment for Biden, it will definitely derail the path to decriminalization and strengthen the resolve of the opposition.

I support pardons for miscarriages of the procedures of justice, not for freeing incarcerated people for actions that are still considered crimes. I guess "hooray, our team won today" is what I am supposed to be saying; time will show us the good or bad of having chosen the shortcut.

I believe the Biden administrations has gotten the ball rolling in getting the DEA to start the process of investigating it for rescheduling. Along with what looks like a few congress people, Cortez and Gaetz? I could be wrong on that. Granted, if so, the process should get sped up. [1]

But ideally we have the solution on two fronts. The DEA should still reschedule it. But Congress should also seriously implement a law decriminalizing it.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2023/07/31/dea-hea...

For those wondering, it looks like scheduling is done by the DEA, FDA, and Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act#:~:t....

This will have virtually zero effect.

The president only has the power to pardon people convicted or accused of violating federal law and prosecuted in federal court.

The problem is that nearly all people arrested for simple possession of marijuana aren't charged under federal law nor prosecuted in federal court. They are charged under state law that similarly outlaws marijuana possession and prosecuted in state court. The president does not have the power to pardon convictions and punishment in state court.

The president can however pardon in states using “emergency powers”.

Our constitution does not define the breadth and depth of emergency powers and it would be up for both congress and SCOTUS to decide that the president can’t do that.

I would hope that a president would just say fuck it and try this though. As much as I want things to be done “the right way”, I value lives of folks more than my neurodivergent desire to have things done neatly.

POTUS: I'm pardoning everybody in your state who has a drug conviction. STATE GOV: No, you aren't. POTUS: You have to let all of those people out of prison. STATE GOV: No, we don't. POTUS: It's an emergency! STATE GOV: No, it isn't.

What next? Send in the army?

What next? Send in the army?

Did the Federal Government send in the military to enforce the federal 55 mph speed limit? No, your state would just get cut off from federal funding (funding for which, BTW, came from the state’s citizens to begin with).

So, don’t let ‘em out? Have fun funding the housing of the pardoned with your own state’s dollars. Is it worth that much to you, Governor It-is-the-principle-not-the-money?

This is exactly the answer. It's also the reason for perennial disputes about states rights, and the exact reason that the constitution was written the way it was - all rights not specifically enumerated lie with the states. Unfortunately, the interstate commerce clause has become the mother of all loopholes, and the federal government has ballooned to be an order of magnitude (at least) larger than it was ever intended to be. And now it wields all this unintended power and collects copious amounts of tax revenue, which it then turns around and wields against the states to exercise yet more power.

The federal speed limit is a law passed by Congress. We're talking about executive action here, and the President is specifically forbidden by law to impound funds without Congressional authorization.

It would be appealed to the US Supreme Court.

I suppose the idea is that the "pardoned" prisoners would sue their states demanding release. If the Supreme Court bothered granting cert it would be to write the shortest, nastiest 9-0 "absolutely not" opinion ever.

The president can however pardon in states using “emergency powers”.

No, he can't.

Our constitution does not define the breadth and depth of emergency powers

In our system, federal powers not defined in the Constitution do not exist.

Emergency powers are not in the constitution, they’re basically “up in the air” of precedent.

It is likely that if an action like this is taken, feathers will be rustled. However if that rustling would impact anything is completely up in the air.

Emergency powers are not in the constitution, they’re basically “up in the air” of precedent.

No, emergency powers that actually exist are components of Constitutionally enumerated powers and, for the President, are mostly spelled out in statute law passed by Congress under its Constitutionally enumerated powers.

There is no source of powers for the US government outside of the Constitution.

Yep. The 10th amendment, in it's entirety:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I don't think it is the case that the President can use "emergency powers" to pardon state crimes; the same argument suggests that the President can use those powers to declare themselves dictator for life.

I think trying something like this would end very badly for the union.

Nothing in currently recognized emergency powers allows the president to pardon state crimes, and in fact it’s very clearly settled law that he cannot do so.

No state or federal court is likely to respect or uphold such an abuse of power as long as US democracy remains intact … and while US democracy is very much in jeopardy right now, it won’t vanish before the next president takes over - Biden will follow the rules of the democratic system.

As the proclamation says, the District of Columbia's local laws are technically federal laws. So it wipes out the convictions of a good number of people in one of our major cities.

I can't quite tell if this applies to military convictions. That would be the other area where the Federal government takes the time to prosecute something as minor as mere possession or use.

Another interesting question: does this actually pardon, or is it more like an open call for applications? It looks to me like you'd want to get that pardon certificate from the WH Pardon lawyer well before the next election.

As a fake lawyer, I would also love to know if this applies to military convictions.

What other places outside of DC does federal law apply to?

(without the need for it to be interstate or some other such clause that is normally required for federal statutes to apply)

Can the president pardon crimes on reservations?

I am also a fake lawyer.

Even in legal states, you can get a simple possession charge on federal land [0].

[0] https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/olympic/news-events/?cid=STEL...

Thank you. I think this rule applies inside federal buildings on state land too?

It depends on the statutory scheme for the acquisition of the federal land. In some cases the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction, in some cases concurrent, and in some it only has a proprietary interest (i.e., the federal government is the landowner but the state has legal jurisdiction).

I'm curious if there are standard rules for post offices.

The Federal government took exclusive jurisdiction over post offices in the 1940s.

It does not apply to military convictions. Very frustrating.

What other places outside of DC does federal law apply to?

In theory, anything owned by the federal government is under federal law. This means federal court houses, branches of the fed, federal waters (anything above 3 geographical miles from shore), national parks, etc. Sometimes law enforcement is delegated to state local authorities though.

I can't quite tell if this applies to military convictions.

No, because it would still violate the UCMJ. The UCMJ would have to change.

No. The President has the power to pardon violations of the UCMJ. There is no statutory change that would have to be made.

As the proclamation says, the District of Columbia's local laws are technically federal laws. So it wipes out the convictions of a good number of people in one of our major cities.

According to the report that preceded this action, more than 75% of all federal possession convictions were prosecuted in Arizona. Apparently it was just a rogue jurisdiction.

There are a number of totally bonkers details scattered around this report. https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...

the District of Columbia's local laws are technically federal laws.

Cannabis has been legal in DC for 8 years. See Initiative 71.

The page mentions DC specifically, which is under federal jurisdiction. The headline may indeed be overselling the implications.

It mentions the pardons in DC from 2022.

This pardon is for the entire United States, at least at the federal level. I don’t think kids sitting in a county jail for brining a joint to school in west Texas are going anywhere, though!

The page mentions 4 categories of law which are pardoned.

The first is https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title21/html..., which covers the whole country.

The next two are DC specific.

And the last is specific to possession on federal properties.

So no, the headline is not overselling the implications. If you simply possessed marijuana and were convicted under federal law, your case is going to be pardoned.

The president only has the power to pardon people convicted or accused of violating federal law and prosecuted in federal court.

The president can pardon any offense against the united states except impeachment. State offenses have always been left to governors to pardon but states are what make the united states and as such state offenses while violating only state law, they are an offense against a state that is part of the union and affect a citizen of the union, as such the president has ulitmate power to pardon.

This is similar to how state legal dispute or prosecution can ultimately be decided by the supreme court of the united states. It does not stop at the state's supreme court.

If trump gets elected next year for example, he can pardon himself of his upcoming likely conviction in georgia. Else you have a situation where in 2028 as soon as he leaves office he becomes a wanted criminal.

Presidents know that pardoning a stare criminal is overriding state law and alienating voters from that state and risking rifts in the union.

I believe the president supersedes state governors in every power they have except things like appointments and firings at the state level.

According to https://www.justice.gov/pardon/frequently-asked-questions#:~....

Does the President have authority to grant clemency for a state conviction? No. The President’s clemency power is conferred by Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which provides: “The President . . . shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Thus, the President’s authority to grant clemency is limited to federal offenses

That's DoJ policy. The legal community in the majority also agree with that, but, here is the text from wikipedia:

The Constitution grants the president the power to pardon "offenses against the United States".[5] An offense that violates state law, but not federal law, is an offense against that state rather than an offense against the United States; however, the Supreme Court has never ruled on this matter or in the President's power to grant a habeas corpus petition for a state offense where it has been denied by a federal court.

If you consider english common law and the absolute nature of the pardon power, including presumptive crimes then this is an untested grey area. If the power was limited, the limit would have been stated. The current consensus is that the limit is implied, but an argument can be made that since english kings had pardon power over their whole domain, the same is implied when stating "offenses against the united states".

Federal authority supersedes state authority in every other case, if this was different it should have been stated so as it is a deviance. But ultimately this would come down to a supreme court opinion.

My guess would be that by the president pardoning these crimes, it would potentially make it more acceptable for governors to do the same for state level crimes.

However, it still doesn't solve the overarching issue of draconian drug laws.

Especially ironic since Biden was one of the original architects of those draconian laws.

This will have virtually zero effect.

Oh it will have a huge effect politically. Biden can talk about how he is compassionate and fighting the injustice of federal marijuana crimes.

It's perfectly politically. Zero cost, and lots of benefit.

Also applies to people arrested in DC.

And when they are charged under federal law, it is often a negotiated downgrade from distribution, i.e. people rarely get sentenced for mere possession.

Believe it or not, I actually know someone who was federally charged for possession of marijuana in the last few years.

He worked as a mover and moved someone onto a military base (in a decriminalized state). He forgot he had his weed in his jacket pocket when they got searched entering the base. Didn't get jail, but did get probation and a record of it.

One moral risk we play is does legalizing our recreational drug (eg alcohol/cannibis) increase the harm done to addicts[0]? While I maintain that there's a logical inconsistency to having legal alcohol and illegal cannabis, I'm on the fence if the consistency should be that both are somehow controlled/illegal (though absolutely not criminal).

Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...

Just musings don't get too aflame over them...

[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/americas-heaviest-drinkers-consume-...

No. Criminalization does more harm than benefit.

For the vast majority of drug users that are not addicted, this is obvious.

And for the addicts, criminalization is the last thing they need. Deterrence might prevent a few people from getting addicted, but not many. A lot of drug addiction is downstream of homelessness and mental health issues meaning the illegality is a very weak deterrent for the most vulnerable.

If we pushed even half of the money spent policing the war on drugs into homelessness support, mental health services, and addiction counseling and harm minimization like needle exchanges, we’d see a huge reduction in harm.

The current regime is not really interested in harm reduction; there is no effort to compare interventions based on objective harm metrics. Instead non-harm metrics like arrest rates and usage are chased. The policies start from Puritanism and historical racism and justify themselves claiming to care about harm after the fact.

To your second point… I think the racial discrimination baked into the history of drug enforcement should steer us away from giving police more excuses to incarcerate on their discretion. But even ignoring that, I don’t think we should support “we knew but could not provide evidence to prove guilt”, the justice system requires evidence for a reason.

No. Criminalization does more harm than benefit.

For the vast majority of drug users that are not addicted, this is obvious.

I'm pretty sure a couple decades of effectively legalized oxycodone and hydrocodone use shows this view is not correct.

But recreational use of those drugs isn't legalized and the highest death toll from opiate use comes from people who move from the pharmaceutical-grade drugs to unregulated street drugs.

You can call for both legalization and high regulation… that’s literally what prescription drugs are.

If we pushed even half of the money spent policing the war on drugs into homelessness support, mental health services, and addiction counseling and harm minimization like needle exchanges, we’d see a huge reduction in harm.

This point seems plausible, are there any sources that might prove it?

Also your point about racial discrimination might be a good utilitarian argument for it's better to let those racially discriminated against free alongside some folks who were also upto other crimes... The replies have definitely given me more food for thought.

What about sugar? Processed meat and fat? Carcinogenics in general? What is the extent of the control we are willing to relinquish to the government in order to control substance abuse?

And how about shifting the discussion from prohibition and control of use to the democatization of healthcare access for people to heal from addiction, if we are so interested in the welfare of addicts at this point?

I’d like governments to continue to regulate how corporations can use and productize addictive and damaging substances. Heroin in big macs would, i’m sure, sell well.

The arguments we made for drug prohibition started spreading to other areas of society. So the prohibitionist mindset was expanding, with potentially disastrous consequences for innocent people caught up in it.

It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...

Your point being?

My point being that sometimes criminals get away with things not because we don't know who is doing what, but because we cannot make a court case. IANAL but my understanding is that the bar (no pun intended) is extremely high (no pun intended).

Some will say "It should be high" but in the realworld we need a pragmatic approach that balances difficulty of proof vs innocent people incarcerated. It's my assertion that the only system which has 0 chance of false positives is the one which incarcerates no one. So it's about finding a good minima / balance.

No one should go to jail because the police are "fairly sure".

to be clear the kind of "fairly sure" i was referring to was the kind of undeniable first hand proof, but difficult to prove in court. Such things exist, a police officer can give testimony in court about what happened, and it's subject to a level of scrutiny, but their body cam recording confirming evidence makes it nigh impossible to argue (instead folks go for inadmissible evidence or other avenues to discredit the evidence).

Along that line of thinking, if you prohibit alcohol and cannabis (and I assume tobacco?) to protect addicts, what about casino gambling? How about micro-transaction games that are gambling in all but name?

I mean those should actually be prohibited.

I support full legalization of cannabis and I agree that those are valid concerns.

Yes, the harm done to addicts will probably increase. There's always trade offs. I think people on the pro-legalization side are not doing enough to address this.

One of the problems with public discourse is that each side doesn't want to give an inch to the other side. I think a lot of people who support legalization of cannabis kinda know that harms to addicts might increase, but they're afraid that if they mention that then that will just give a talking point to the prohibitionists.

Both sides are guilty of misusing or ignoring facts and concerns that don't benefit their preferred take on the issue. However, it seems to me the prohibitionists are far more egregious when it comes making bad arguments.

Your argument about marijuana being easier to prove is a very bad scenario, regardless of how common it is/used to be. By the same logic why not make it illegal to wear socks, it would provide reason for the system to punish anybody they are 'fairly sure' is up to some other crime.

Do you have any thoughts pertaining to the legal status of products containing nicotine?

While I maintain that there's a logical inconsistency to having legal alcohol and illegal cannabis, I'm on the fence if the consistency should be that both are somehow controlled/illegal (though absolutely not criminal).

"Illegal but not criminal" for a drug just means a very clumsily implemented tax, if you want to do that, it would strictly be better to just do a tax.

Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...

Eliminating crimes whose main use is as an end-run around probable cause (for arrest) and proof beyond a reasonable doubt (for conviction) on other crimes (and thus, which exist to be selectively used to end-run due process) is an unqualified good thing.

>> Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...

Then don't prosecute them. It's supposed to be hard to convict people.

Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...

That is an excellent argument in favor of legalization, not one against. What you're describing is selective enforcement and prosecution, and the use of it as a tool to arrest and convict someone because they can't be proven to have committed some other crime.

It's not logical to solve any drug problem by making it illegal.

Illegal means that we don't want people to help, it means we don't want them to do something between don't like it.

Otherwise it doesn't make sense that the result is jail as jail is for punishment (it shouldn't) and not for rehabilitation.

For reference, as of January 2022 there were ZERO people in federal custody solely for simple possession of marijuana[0].

As a gesture, this seems fine. But the continued presence of cannabis on Schedule I makes an absolute mockery out of our entire code of laws.

[0]: https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...

Just over 300 people — or 0.5% of the total prison population — are behind bars for any sort of drug possession. [1]

If anything it'll help some folks to have a their records cleaned up.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/bidens-marijuana-pardons-won...

I agree with your point.

But the quoted statistic is confusing. Under what specifics would 300 people = 0.5% of the total prison population? As I understand it, the total prison population of the USA is over 1 million, and the subset designated 'federal prisoners' is, by itself, over 200,000.

That 0.5% figure is wrong. It’s closer to 20%. (350,000 people) Here is a write up of many prisoner stats from 2023. See slideshow 3:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

Note that terminology in this space is very important and subtle. 7 million people are arrested each year, and > 600K are sent to prison, but the total number of people in prison (and number that are incarcerated one way or another) is much lower than those numbers suggest. The total incarcerated population is about 1.75 million.

2% of the total population arrested each year sounds like a lot!

If we believe chatgpt, then the median time in prison is a couple of months.

I'm unsure about the math: "The arrival rate $\lambda$ is the rate at which people arrive in the queue, and the service rate $\mu$ is the rate at which people are served and leave the queue. In a stable system, the service rate must be greater than the arrival rate, otherwise the queue will grow indefinitely.

Given that the total number of people in the queue $n$ is 1750000 and the arrival rate $\lambda$ is 600000 people per year, we can find the service rate $\mu$ by dividing the total number of people in the queue by the arrival rate:

$\mu = \frac{n}{\lambda} = \frac{1750000}{600000} \approx 2.92$ people per year.

This means that on average, about 2.92 people are served and leave the queue every year.

The median waiting time in the queue can be calculated using the formula for the median of an exponential distribution, which is $\frac{\ln(2)}{\mu}$.

So, the median waiting time in the queue in years is $\frac{\ln(2)}{2.92} \approx 0.237$ years."

If we believe chatgpt

We don’t. It’s usually not hard to source actual statistics (and when it is, that’s usually an indicator that ChatGPT is completely wrong).

2% of the total population arrested each year sounds like a lot!

It's probably mostly people getting arrested multiple times.

But yeah, there's a lot of arrests where police in other countries would have just ID'd people and sent them on their way. Arrests are simply the default operating procedure in the US, which is likely related to the fact that the lack of reliable national ID makes it harder to identify people on the spot.

I think most libertarians argue holds water that weed and dealing weed is a victimless crime. Now redo that with "how many people are in for dealing weed (and only weed) and other drugs" and that number goes way up. Obviously people found with guns and doing violence while selling drugs is another thing, no longer victimless. The War on Drugs is multidecade failure

But the pardon can allow those with convictions on their record to live a normal life.

Edit: major caveat, all the data harvesting and background check firms generally do not proactively purge their data sets as they’re supposed to. It’s your obligation to follow up with every single one of them individually, and there are a whole lot of them, they operate under the radar, and it’s hard to contact them. Finally it’s impossible to verify they actually did.

Finally it’s impossible to verify they actually did.

Sounds like an opportunity for someone to set up a service which does. Do the verification I mean. :)

Sounds like an opportunity to sell snake oil, when you can't actually verify they're doing anything at all

Pardons don't expunge criminal records.

Expungement is a judicial remedy that is rarely granted by the court and cannot be granted within the Department of Justice or by the President.

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/frequently-asked-questions

The Biden administration—HHS, specifically—has recommended rescheduling marijuana as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

"If the recommendation is approved, marijuana would no longer be listed as a dangerous substance like heroin or LSD and it would reduce or potentially eliminate criminal penalties for possession. The decision rests with the DEA, which has rarely, if ever, rejected a rescheduling recommendation from HHS."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2023/10/10/schedule...

The DEA is part of the "Biden Administration". One part of the administration- HHS, has made a recomendation to another part, the DEA.

Yeah I mean if Biden actually cared about it he could issue an executive order and have it rescheduled tomorrow whether the DEA wanted to or not. this is just a performative act. He is the chief executive ultimately its his decision to leave it as is of to reschedule it. if he doesn't then it means he doesn't care and anything less is just a performance for votes

Not to mention makes it impossible to get a job at a company which has government contracts, because they require drug tests.

Sure, but thousands of people now have one less obstacle to passing a background check for a job, etc. I agree with you about the scheduling, but this is more than a gesture, and will have a material impact on a lot of people, especially in DC.

It seems weird that it excludes foreign nationals who are no longer resident. Why not just pardon everyone who was convicted?

the law is always complicated

"because reasons" isn't actually a good justification for a system that's broken and corrupted beyond all repair

not what I said, but I will rephrase for you.

the law is inherently always complicated, because it, by definition, must provide general and categorical solutions to a wide range of particular instances.

No but "because 27 pages of boring and annoying backstory which are logically consistent but result in an outcome you don't like for seemingly arbitrary reasons" is potentially a good justification even if it sucks and is boring and tl;dr.

You wouldn't argue that a mathematical proof is more than 2 pages long and therefore doesn't count, right?

Do you generally assume anything potentially complicated, or anything that hasn't been specifically explained to you, is automatically specious?

Why not just pardon everyone who was convicted?

The argument I've heard is that many with simple possession on their record may have actually pleaded down from a different crime, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

The argument I've heard is that many with simple possession on their record may have actually pleaded down from a different crime, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

How is this related to nationality or residence?

It shouldn't need to. What good is a plea deal if you have to work around it because the charge was originally different? Either you have had the charge reduced or you haven't. Handling this any other way isn't good.

It’s a concession to not seem weak on illegal immigration. If illegal immigrants were pardoned that would be ammo for the Republicans in election season.

Reminder that Biden can only pardon federal crimes, and that very few people have federal convictions for simple possession.

Smart to do what he unilaterally can considering how stalled things are right now.

The change still happens within the executive branch - the DEA is in charge of the scheduling of marijuana.

The big limitation here is federal vs. state, not executive vs. legislative. Drug crime clemency isn't stalled in the states.

Honest question, isn't there a bunch of stuff (including drug stuff) that the local cops don't pursue because it's the feds' job? Or is this just my small random assortment of U.S. crime drama viewing biasing my sample set?

Drug prosecutions are overwhelming local (meaning that they're state crimes).

Exactly. Not many folks catching federal charges for simple possession. trafficking on the other hand....

https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...

very few people

i know it's relatively few people compared to the number of people with state charges, but the reporting on this says it's thousands of people. which, in absolute terms, is a lot of people.

This only applies to federal "possession or use", which nearly never happens.

Those convicted of "possession or use" are nearly 100% plea down cases when the actual offense was sales, distribution, or manufacturing.

it used to happen a lot, and this also applies to the district of columbia.

Essentially none of those people are still in prison.

but with a record can they get jobs, pass a background check, et cetera?

This pardon is a good thing, why are we discussing it like it's not a move in the right direction?

Unfortunately everything in life is political now, so you can't just say, "Glad this happened" if you have some other unrelated gripe -- you need to downplay it, imply it's only for optics, say it doesn't go far enough, etc. etc.

they might be on probation tho

And if this was merely a commutation, that would matter more. But pardons don't just end sentences, they remove all lasting legal impacts of the conviction.

> Those convicted of "possession or use" are nearly 100% plea down cases when the actual offense was sales, distribution, or manufacturing.

Not true at all - guess what charge you catch if you are caught smoking on a chairlift at a ski resort on Federal land or if you're on a hike in a National park.

Thousands of people every year;

https://www.nydailynews.com/2013/09/16/marijuana-busts-on-fe...

I don't understand why he's singling out military veterans not to receive this pardon. It's very frustrating. Violations under Article 112a, UCMJ, solely for use of marijuana, should also be included.

I don't understand why he's singling out military veterans not to receive this pardon.

Nothing in the text of the pardon does that is "singling out" veterans.

It doesn't pardon UCMJ violations, but it absolutely includes military veterans with federal civilian convictions (unless they were in unsatisfactory immigration status at the time of the offense.)

Not including military offenses is a different thing than singling out veterans.

Fine. I don't understand why he's singling out military veterans with military convictions not to receive this pardon. It's significant disparate treatment in a way that precludes a significant benefit from going to a group of people of whom 100% have served this country.

EDIT: And no, Parker v. Levy is not a valid justification for this, as the conduct was equally criminalized in both the military and the civilian world. Furthermore, Parker v. Levy and related cases are only relevant on what is lawful to make different in the military justice system, not what is good policy. Nobody is saying the President cannot exercise the pardon power in a way that discriminates against military members; the pardon power is plenary. I am saying he shouldn't.

It could be because it would prompt a huge pain in the ass process or question of, does their discharge status change? Granted, they dont (at least not during my service or my dad's, to give context I served 2013-2018 and dad 1995-2003) give our dishonorable discharged. But a general discharge or other than honorable (OTH). If these are pardoned UCMJ violations that lead to a discharge, does it prompt to change their discharge from OTH or General to Honorable?

My guess is also the UCMJ is like a separate court system out side of the usual court system. Since military are held. to a 'higher moral standard' and such. Even if it were made legal for citizens, it may not mean military rules are amended to allow use. An example could be Spice. While you could buy spice at a head shop and smoke it, not illegal, the military deemed it against the rules and you could get kicked out for smoking spice.

First, let me say that I think your comment is fantastic. Not that many people have the capacity to think through military justice issues in all their nuance. New convening authorities often have a more tenuous grasp of the interplay between courts-martial and discharge characterizations than you just demonstrated.

There's potentially some question as to whether the President has the power to pardon the conviction and impose an OTH, because an OTH implicates a liberty interest and requires a hearing unless waived. See, e.g., Vierrether v. United States, 27 Fed. Cl. 357, 364 (1992), aff'd without op., 6 F.3d 786 (Fed. Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1030 (1994).

However, I'd be hard pressed to find any objection to unilaterally imposing an administrative discharge with a General (Under Honorable Conditions) characterization. Alternatively, there is nothing preventing the President from making the pardon conditional.

I don't understand why he's singling out military veterans with military convictions not to receive this pardon.

There's a fairly consistent throughline in the theory of the law (that gets to the reason there even is a UCMJ in the first place) that military discipline is categorically distinct from civilian criminal law, and under that theory possession of marijuana contrary to military regulations is meaningfully distinct from simple possession in the civilian context.

Its also, to be fair, pretty clear that, clear and crisp as the theory may be, in practice that's more of a statistical difference in significance than a categorical one. But even a statistical difference can, arguably, justify the normal case-by-case approach to clemency rather than a blanket approach.

Good for them, of course. The cynic in me, however, can help but notice that that's a lot of people whose voting rights have just been restored.

And the cynic in me wonders why you think people having their voting rights rightfully restored is bad or suspect?

I don't think it's bad. What made you think I think that?

I do think our current president is a swine of a human being who cares nothing for others but his immediate family. Evidence for this is that he himself is largely responsible for our draconian drug laws when it suited him politically, and now as his progressive wing is deserting him (for excellent reasons) he's politically motivated to do the right thing in view of an election he'd in a pickle to win.

I don't mind people voting rights restored with good reason. I do mind people who use others as a means to an end.

I don't mind people's voting rights being restored for any reason. It is too fundamental of a right to infringe, especially for small things like weed possession. I'm not even convinced we should take felon's voting rights.

probably not as many as you may think. If I am reading the federal statutes right simple possession in most cases is a misdemeanor. it also targets the district of columbia which votes so heavily democrat it does not really matter from an electoral perspective.

I didn't know blanket pardons were legal. Kind of feels like he's on shaky ground here. If this were allowed then all future presidents could veto in perpetuity any criminal law created by Congress.

Speaking of which, his pardon only pardons those who have violated federal or DC laws, not state laws.

Yes, this seems like a constitutional test. If you need this pardon to stand up, you'd better get the certificate from the WH pardon lawyer with your name on it.

Jimmy Carter did the same almost half a century ago by granting a blanket pardon to Vietnam war draft dodgers, and all of them have lived to a ripe old age without being taken to court to test the pardon.

There is a long history of blanket pardons, isn't there?

I mean, they have been. Trump pardoned so many people in his last few weeks.

Symbolic half-measure having little to no actual impact.

They should just legalize marijuana federally, that would be real change with tangible consequences.

This is shallow campaigning for reelection, in lieu of actual legalization.

Nobody should ever fix anything unless they can fix everything!

Nobody should ever fix anything unless they can fix everything!

Oh please. "Fix everything" in this context would be legalizing all drugs federally.

This fixes nothing except perhaps shifting some public perception in the minds of voters that don't look past the headlines.

Pretty sure the people getting pardoned like it.

That's a good start Joe, keep going.

The scope of the president's pardon power is breathtaking.

  ([T]he power [of clemency] flows from the Constitution alone, not from any legislative enactments, and . . . it cannot be modified, abridged, or diminished by the Congress.). -- -20Garland, 71 U.S. at 380; see also Schick v. Reed, 419 U.S. 256, 266 (1974)

If Trump wins he apparently can pardon everyone with a federal Jan6 conviction at will, with no review and as a second term president, no voters to answer to. That is motivating to both sides. Only the election can tell which side has gained more from the reaction to the events.

If Trump wins he apparently can pardon everyone with a federal Jan6 conviction at will, with no review and as a second term president, no voters to answer to.

Add on top of that the insider allegations of Trump selling pardons for 2 million $ apiece [1], and the list of ... sometimes really questionable pardons that were issued [2], and it becomes a real issue of national security.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/giuliani-accu...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/trump-pardons-co...

Unethical pardons on the last day in office is a Presidential tradition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich

But only for convictions by Federal, not state, courts. That's one of the reasons the Georgia case against Trump is interesting.

About time. Finally the harm caused by possession offenses is starting to be recognized by the state.

If they want to ban drugs in general, then they should prosecute those supplying it and those producing it for sale. Not private individuals consuming it in their own homes, and causing absolutely no harm to anyone. And those who are consuming it in public while presenting a danger to others, that can be made illegal. Failing that, they can outright ban public consumption.

Not private individuals consuming it in their own homes, and causing absolutely no harm to anyone

Considering that there is -at least- a correlation between substance abuse and domestic abuse [1,2]. I wouldn't be so sure to say "absolutely no harm" in this case.

[1] https://www.gov1.com/public-health/articles/the-link-between...

[2] https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/59/5/1035/5486457

I meant individuals living on their own in that case. By all means increase the penalties for the abuse if it's proven to be fueled by drugs.

That's fair, that's an edge case of the law but probably is not the general trend.

Missouri and Ohio have both legalized recreational home cultivation in the last year; the first two red states to do so. Hard to overstate what an achievement that is. Prohibition is more or less over at this point, outside of the deep red south.

Having grown up in Missouri, you could have knocked me over with a feather when that happened. They what?!

From Ohio. Can't speak for Missouri, but the reality here is that like most states, it's a rural-urban divide more than a "the whole state is red." Ohio has a solid red majority, especially in the legislature, but the cities are very blue and there are plenty of moderates. So I think those groups passed it, but you could see the conservative legislators were none too happy about it and were going to fight implementation tooth and nail, just like they'd like to do with abortion protections. There is sadly a pretty strong division as with many issues in this country, but enough of a majority to move the needle at least.

I live in an area where private consumption is de facto legal.

A neighbor of mine would smoke weed constantly.

A young woman would come to his apartment every month or so. He would open the door, invite her in, and she would refuse. They would talk at the door for about five minutes while marijuana smoke drifted into the hall. Then she’d leave.

One day I asked she was his daughter, she said laughed and said, “No, I’m his parole officer!”

So it’s pretty legal for indoors purposes.

But - it’s not de facto legal in public. This is a big issue in public parks. Nobody wants their kids to share a park with potheads.

Same applies for alcohol and tobacco.

I’m fine with legalizing pot under the same conditions as alcohol - in your residence, buying from authorized dealers, high taxes, review boards, etc.

But just look at the high number of alcohol related crimes. Not just drunk driving, but public intoxication too.

Don’t expect legality pot to make the illegal uses go away. People will stop buy from illegal dealers, which will continue to be prosecuted (they don’t pay taxes).

It won’t do much good or harm.

Nobody wants their kids to share a park with potheads

I see this as no different than alcohol or tobacco (which you also called out)

Growing up and not having a place to smoke, we'd always go to a park. But we'd go deep into the woods, etc. last thing we wanted to do was inconvenience someone else, leading to us getting caught.

Same is true of when we drank booze. No need to do it in front of a family.

I’m talking about parks I can’t take my family to because of how much drinking and pot smoking is going on - not kids smoking the middle of the forest.

The police give warnings, then only after a thousand warning give tickets.

But at the end of the day, these parks are not usable because of “partying.”

When I had kids I took pride in living in a lower income neighborhood. I didn’t want to be part of “white flight.”

But park problem went from being a nuisance to a big problem when COVID hit. Parks were one of the only places kids could go.

Now the kids are older I’m looking forward to leaving the soulless suburbs where all houses look the same.

But public drinking and drug use made the public spaces in lower income neighborhoods unusable.

Legalizing pot won’t help or hurt at all. But some people with convictions for possession deserve to have a light and temporary black mark on their record.

At university two of my friends went down a dark road with Marijuana use. One destroyed his very bright future - went from a top student to a dropout. The other one had severe mental psychosis episodes, the last one being where he physically threatened other students with a knife and was arrested and subsequently medically repatriated back to his home country - his parents were financially ruined by the cost of getting him home.

I am not sure that this is as black and white as some people make it out to be. Complete freedom to do whatever one pleases is not Utopia. There is a limit if one wants a functioning society that is on the whole safe and high trust.

Utopia is not achievable, and the path to hell is laid with good intentions.

There is a limit if one wants a functioning society that is on the whole safe and high trust.

We all have different thresholds on where that limit lies. In the film Demolition Man, Dr. Raymond Cocteau's vision of a safe San Angeles did not allow sports, swearing, eating meat, or consuming sugar or caffeine because they are "bad" for you.

Yes, while with alcohol, nobody has ruined their future or physically threatened others.

As an immigrant, this stood out to me:

... I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., do hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who ...

... This pardon does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense.

In the first of the above, it specifically states that it applies to citizens and lawful permanent residents. In the second, it says it does not apply to people who didn't have valid immigration status.

So, what happens to someone who had a valid immigration status, but was not a lawful permanent resident? For example, someone on a student or a tourist visa?

Can anyone with legal expertise shed some light on how such things are usually resolved? My naive expectation would be that it still would only apply to citizens and lawful permanent residents. But then, why specifically call out that it doesn't apply to this specific group out of many other groups that aren't covered under "citizens or lawful permanent residents"?

So, what happens to someone who had a valid immigration status, but was not a lawful permanent resident? For example, someone on a student or a tourist visa?

I brought my wife over on the 90 day fiancee visa well before there was a TV show about it, and mostly because it was the only way we could hang out. Thankfully we lucked out, and celebrated our 20th anniversary earlier this year.

But to the point: When you're dealing with DHS and immigration, it's made absolutely clear that if you screw anything up, you're kicked out of the country and it's going to be a ballache to get back in. It's not surprising that they were not included in the blanket pardon, and I think that's actually pretty reasonable, even though I also think that incarceration over marijuana possession is absurd and has been pretty devastating to the lives of millions of people and the communities they live in.

The amount of work you have to do to qualify for a visa, and to move between the different statuses (there are fun periods where your status is just... pending. When we went through this, there was nothing you have to show for this except for a generic looking letter from DHS. All your fancy documentation is sitting in a US Gov't inbox somewhere while they make sure you're not a terrorist) and, frankly, if you manage to get arrested for smoking weed while you're on a visa, you're kind of an idiot.

We didn't even travel outside the country until my wife got her full-fledged citizenship. And when she applied for that, they gave her a hard time over the speeding tickets she'd gotten while here.

Whether you agree with the concept or not, visitors to the country are told pretty clearly that the rules apply extra hard to them, and the consequences of not following very basic rules are going to be extra inconvenient. You get caught breaking the law, you risk losing your visa status and losing the ability to ever visit the country again.

Not a lawyer or other credentialed legal expert, but used to closely reading legal documents:

So, what happens to someone who had a valid immigration status, but was not a lawful permanent resident?

If they are a currently a citizen or lawful permanent resident (the first piece you quote is about the status you have to have to receive the pardon now) and they were a citizen or a lawfully-present non-citizen at the time of the offense (the second part is explicitly about status at the time of offense) they are pardoned.

If they are not a citizen or lawful permanent resident now (even if they are in legal status now and at the time of the offense), no pardon.

If they were a non-citizen that was not legally present at the time of the offense, but are a citizen or lawful permanent resident now (because of the interaction between immigration and law enforcement, that's difficult but not entirely impossible), also no pardon.

You have to both have been in the right status at the time of the offense and the narrower right status at the time of the pardon to qualify.

Its macabre that I can walk into a nice clean store and get personalized service to buy something that thousands are sitting in prison for.

That is fairly wild when you phrase it like that. Especially as you could literally be 100ft from someone getting cuffs put on who is across the border in another state, while you are getting gold treatment in a dispensary trying to figure out what strain you want.

Do guns next.

Isn't possession of guns already legal?

This pardon applies only to federal possession and use sentences, still a nice gesture, but it's a small percentage of convictions as federal prosecution of these charges is rare. More important for it's symbolic effects then for the actual direct results

I don’t get how there can be a blanket pardon on the books for federal crimes, while still being illegal at a federal level. The pardon should have come along with legalization, and putting it on the same level as alcohol. The current situation feels ridiculous.

Can someone explain how this differs from the last time Biden "pardoned people for marijuana offenses" in October of 2022?

The election is in a year rather than a month.

Say no to drugs.

"As I have said before, convictions for simple possession of marijuana have imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities."

This has always seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to me. Effectively a life sentence for misdemeanor crimes. This is a good first step, but it does not go far enough.

This proclamation has essentially freed slaves held by the prison complex, and I bet it will try to claw back an equal amount on inmates by other means in the coming years. Maybe DUI and traffic laws will become harsher.

No one in the feds actually was released from this. Zero people.

I was locked up with a guy who spent his whole life from 17 to early 50s (and went blind as a result of medical neglect of his diabetes during) for "conspiracy to distribute" Marijuana, even though he never had any in his possession.

Don't fall for this idiocy. Biden is one of the biggest reasons for systemic racism in law enforcement.

[dupe]

Merge, or some more over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38736184

Much like The adoption of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer had no long term downsides and "fixed" the Ozone hole [1], this action is an unequivocal good and there are no long term downsides from my perspective.

[1]https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/rebuilding-ozone...

Hot take- I don't use cannabis and I like that cannabis use disqualifies a lot of my competitors in the job market.