Biden Pardons Marijuana Possession

President Biden on Thursday pardoned all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. It's widely seen as a first step toward decriminalization of marijuana. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 6 Oct 2022.

"Wow, this must affect a lot of people," I thought at first. I've been hearing from marijuana legalization advocates for decades that some 90% of all people in federal prison are there on nonviolent drug convictions. So I skimmed through news articles such as the one linked above to find how many people would be freed, and it's... zero. "Officials said there are currently no Americans serving prison time solely on federal simple marijuana possession charges," the article reports. The government estimates, though, that there are 6,500 people convicted of such crimes in the past.

So where are all these nonviolent simple drug possession offenders, this supposed 90% of all convicts, being imprisoned? They're not in state prisons. Ten years ago I asked a brother-in-law of mine who's a state prosecutor about the 90% statistic. He just laughed. "If that were true, given the short sentences that crime carries, marijuana possession would be 98% of my office's cases. It's more like zero. Maybe that 90% is the feds."

Well, the numbers from drug legalization advocates are clearly hokum. (Is anyone really surprised?) But that doesn't mean Biden's pardon is wrong. I'm in favor of correcting government drug policy to be rational and evidence based. Marijuana was miscategorized by the federal government decades ago, contrary to available facts and for openly racist reasons. Biden is working on changing that, too. He says he will instruct the HHS and Attorney General to review the facts and set new policy as appropriate. We'll see how long that takes.

GoT S4E10: Did the TV Series Stray too Far from the Books?

In the season 4 finale of Game of Thrones Tyrion Lannister makes difficult, emotionally fraught decisions about what to do to people who've wronged him. The episode was a very satisfying season ender. Only one little thing bothered me: how did Tyrion get from location A to B to C so quickly during the suspenseful part of the show? I looked up the episode notes in an online GoT FAQ to see what detail(s) I might have missed. There in the notes I found more than I expected. Way more. In a section on differences between the books and the TV series I found there was a major omission about his motivation and state of mind for what he did.

Look, I understand TV shows have to cut out things that are in the books. Hundreds of pages of exposition about travels or battles? Has to be cut down to the few most meaningful scenes. A huge cast of minor characters? Condensed to a more manageable number. Subplots that don't advance the main narrative or crucially develop the main characters? Gone.

I wrote about these kinds of variances in my episode by episode blogs on Season 1 of the Wheel of Time streaming adaptation. There I'd read the books and could spot lots of differences. Most of the changes I felt were fine. They were disorienting at first, but soon enough they made sense per the needs outlined above. There were a few changes, though, that were so big, so fundamental to the setting or the narrative or main character development, that I called foul. And this change from the books in the Game of Thrones season 4 finale is one I think might too big.

S4E10 spoilers after the cut.

( S4E10 spoilers (open to view) )