Decryption | A smell of “grass” on the presidential election | The Press

(New York) When it comes to drugs, Joe Biden is really nothing like Barack Obama.

In the 1990s, Obama admitted in his memoirs, My father’s dreamshaving consumed, when young, “weed” and “sometimes a line of coke, when we could afford it”.

During the same decade, Biden piloted a crime bill in the Senate which notably aimed to increase prison sentences for people convicted of drug possession.

However, at the White House, the 46^e president continues to go further than 44^e to change his country’s policies regarding marijuana.

Last March, for example, at age 81, he became the first president to mention “weed” during a State of the Union address. “No one should be imprisoned for using or possessing marijuana,” he said.

Last week, his administration took another historic step, beginning a process that will lead the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reclassify marijuana as a narcotic subject to the Controlled Substances Act. What does this decision, described as “seismic” by the Politico website, mean?

Since 1970, marijuana has been classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, along with heroin, methamphetamine, and LSD, drugs that do not have widespread medical use in the United States and which have a high potential for abuse. Following a recommendation from the Department of Justice confirmed last Tuesday, cannabis will move to Schedule III along with certain medications codeine, anabolic steroids and ketamine, among other substances that have moderate physical and psychological dependence potential. low.

This change will have scientific, economic and political consequences. It will encourage the multiplication of research and clinical trials to determine the medical benefits of cannabis, a prelude to the participation of pharmaceutical companies in the sale and distribution of medical marijuana in the 38 American states where it is legal.

The change will also allow recreational cannabis businesses in the 24 states where it is legal to access tax deductions and banking services that are currently prohibited to them.

And it will help to give the 2024 presidential campaign a smell of “grass”.

Stop beating around the bush

“I can’t stress enough that they need to get on with it as quickly as possible,” Kamala Harris said last March, urging the Department of Justice to begin the process of reclassifying marijuana.

The vice-president had not mentioned the November electoral deadline, but she would not be the only Democrat to believe that this reclassification could, until then, help her boss get closer to young people, many of whom shun him .

One thing is certain, the Americans are well ahead of Washington when it comes to marijuana. No less than 70% of them supported the legalization of this drug at the federal level in November 2023, according to a Gallup poll.

Hemp aside in Congress?

Last Wednesday, the day after the Justice Department’s decision, the majority leader in the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, took note of this reality by re-introducing a bill intended to legalize marijuana at the federal level.

The text is unlikely to be adopted by both houses of Congress by November. But it could constitute an electoral argument for the Democrats.

“Reclassifying cannabis is a necessary and long-overdue step, but it is by no means the end of the story,” Senator Schumer said in introducing the bill.

But can the marijuana issue really help Joe Biden? According to analysts, it already played a role in his 2020 victory against Donald Trump in Arizona, where a referendum on the legalization of this drug boosted youth participation.

The plant for November

In 2024, marijuana will be the subject of one of two referendums to be held in Florida, the other to be on abortion. Donald Trump will have to make a decision as the state’s elector. It remains to be seen whether it will open up.

In the meantime, a reminder: at the White House, the 45^e President himself set a precedent in 2018 by legalizing hemp and cannabidiol (CBD) derived from it, provided that the plant contains no more than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

He also orchestrated a rollback the same year by allowing Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, to reverse a Barack Obama policy aimed at suspending the application of the controlled substances law in states where marijuana is legal.

That said, Kamala Harris is perhaps the one who best embodies the ambivalence, hypocrisy or evolution of many Americans regarding marijuana.

“And I inhaled!” “, she joked during a radio interview in 2019, admitting to having indeed smoked marijuana in college, unlike a certain Bill Clinton, who declared in 1992 to have smoked marijuana on campus Oxford “without inhaling”.

The joke didn’t make everyone laugh. After all, as San Francisco’s district attorney, Kamala Harris oversaw scores of marijuana-related convictions.

In 2019, she came out in favor of legalizing marijuana at the federal level. If Joe Biden follows suit, he will once again have surpassed Barack Obama on this issue.