“No one should be jailed for simply using or possessing cannabis“, says Joe Biden in a video posted Thursday, September 6 on Twitter. “I am announcing a pardon for all federal offences, says the boss of the White House.Too many lives have been disrupted by our flawed approach. It’s time to right our wrongs“.
“It’s time that we right these wrongs,” says President Biden while announcing he is pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana. https://t.co/q5GZGnIFPI pic.twitter.com/qLScxKOkTT
—CBS News (@CBSNews) October 6, 2022
Joe Biden calls on all governors to do the same in their state. He also calls for a change in the classification of drugs: today in the United States, marijuana is in the same category as heroin and LSD, “which makes no sense“.
At the federal level, no one, to date, is in prison solely for having been arrested in possession of a joint. But over the last thirty years, 6,500 people have been convicted at the federal level (and many more of course at the state level under local laws). This can be a real handicap, for example in finding a job, renting an apartment, or even enrolling in university… This mention will therefore now be erased from the criminal record.
This measure, in fact, brings the government closer to the positions adopted by the States. 19 of the 50 US states (plus the capital Washington) have already fully legalized recreational cannabis, others have reduced penalties. Marijuana products are more and more varied, more and more accessible. According to a government study published this summer, one in ten Americans between the ages of 19 and 30 use cannabis every day. A figure that has doubled in ten years.
In fact, there are only a handful of ultra-conservative, rural states left, like Wyoming, Idaho, or Nebraska where smoking remains illegal. Joe Biden puts an end to a certain anomaly.
He explains that this will also make it possible to regulate a real racial disparity, because blacks and mestizos are arrested and convicted far more often than whites. While studies show whites and blacks use marijuana at similar rates, a black person is more than three times more likely to be arrested for possession than a white person, according to an ACLU report. , which analyzed data on marijuana possession arrests from 2010 to 2018. The head of state’s announcement drew rave reviews from the Democratic camp.
Today is a particularly good day to rep this Union-made t-shirt https://t.co/IJcp1SQYMo
—John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) October 6, 2022
Even if there is obviously a form of opportunism in this announcement, which comes a month before the mid-term elections and which has everything to seduce Democratic voters, especially young people.