Biden Pardons Marijuana Possession

[canyonwalker]

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.

Comments

[canyonwalker]

I should add that I find it refreshing the virtually unchecked pardon power of the presidency is being used to forgive low-level, "blue collar" crime rather than give free passes to the rich and powerful convicted of multi-million dollar fraud.

[khedron]

A+ to this.

[canyonwalker]

Also, in regards to the question, "Has a mass pardon (to thousands of people) ever been given before?" the only other one I'm aware of is President Jimmy Carter's 1977 pardon of Vietnam War era draft dodgers.

[sorcyress]

My understanding (from paying a small amount of attention on twitter, not serious research, so grain of salt) is that part of the problem is that "simple marijuana possession" is almost _never_ levied as a solo crime. Even for first time offenders, it comes paired with "intent to distribute" or "resisting arrest" or "was rude to the cops who asked to search your car" or "let's add bonus charges to put the black person in jail for longer".

It is a good first step though, and I hope we see more of them!

~Sor