For an old school drug warrior, back when being a drug warrior was necessary for a Democrat to get elected, Joe Biden’s announcement that he was issuing a pardon for all citizens and lawful residents for simple possession of marijuana sent a signal.
He said the blanket pardon would help “thousands of people who were previously convicted of simple possession” and “who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result.” While “white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates,” he noted, “Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”
It’s not that he’s wrong about collateral consequences of a federal misdemeanor conviction for simple marijuana possession, even if there wasn’t a single person incarcerated who would be freed and, while it would be important to the approximately 6500 people who had federal convictions for simple possession, it would have no affect on the millions who had state convictions or those in federal custody or with convictions for conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
Weed remains illegal under federal law, and a Schedule I drug. Those convicted of weed distribution remain in prison and those who completed their sentences remain felons. As Jacob Sullum noted, this move was “modest” at best.
“Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana,” Biden said today. “It’s time that we right these wrongs.” Given the narrow reach of the policies he just announced—which leave marijuana prohibition untouched, do not allow even medical use, and keep marijuana growers and distributors in prison—his reforms represent only a modest step in that direction.
Some states have legalized pot, whether for medical use and/or recreational use. This has created an irrational conflict, that the same conduct that is lawful in one place is criminal in another. How can we rationally explain why this disparity exists where culpability is serious enough to imprison a person the next town over because there is a state line between the two?
Did Biden send a signal that he supported the federal decriminalization of marijuana, or perhaps even the legalization of weed?
Consider, for example, that just months ago, Biden’s Department of Justice successfully prosecuted a man named Jonathan Wall and sought 10 years to life in prison for the crime of conspiracy to distribute cannabis. While Biden deserves praise for pardoning people no longer imprisoned, it is important to remember that he is extending that olive branch while insisting that the people who sold them marijuana should be caged for decades.
“It remains deeply disturbing,” Jason Flores-Williams, who represented Wall in court until the conclusion of his trial in May, tells Reason. “While we’re glad that the president is pardoning people for pot possession, really what needs to happen is the decriminalization or total legalization of marijuana so that people like my current clients and people who I’ve represented don’t spend any time of their short precious lives incarcerated in a cage for a plant that I can go buy around the corner.”
That a line can be drawn between using and distributing marijuana, it’s a line that makes little sense. Not everyone has a backyard where they can grow pot, and so they have to get it somewhere. Why is it fine to possess it, to smoke it, but not provide it to those who do?
Granted, the legalization of pot has come with the state dictating who can lawfully grow and sell it, replete with bureaucratic requirements and a hefty tax levy, but that makes the unlicensed distributors and sellers regulatory violators, not nefarious drug lords.
We’ve been living with an inexplicable conflict in the legal treatment of pot ever since Colorado dove into the abyss. Was Biden right to issue this mostly symbolic pardon? Was it too much or not enough? Does our patchwork approach, between states and fed create an irreconcilable conflict that needs to come to an end if we’re to have a rational approach to marijuana, where the same conduct in one place is cool and rewarded while it will put you in jail, if not prison, elsewhere?
And if so, how far does it go, possession, growth, personal use distribution, mass quantity distribution? Is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed, or is it time to remove the line altogether?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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I believe that question was answered by Prohibition. Although there are plenty of alcohol-related crimes today, no one is seeking to outlaw alcohol…because they can’t prevent it from being manufactured and sold. The same is true of marijuana. It’s been outlawed since 1937. Given the number of people in jail for marijuana today…not exactly preventing its use, now is it? Marijuana should be legal (at least for adults)… because it’s going to be used whether it’s illegal or not. And like alcohol, its mere consumption is not that dangerous.
The laws against mind altering substances other than ethyl alcohol and nicotine are necessary for the maintenance of the US’ PRIVILEGE HIERARCHY.
Laws against normal human behaviour provide lots of discretion, one can search assiduously in high crime areas where bad people live while neglecting the same level of law contravention in genteel areas where respectable people live.
Every nation has a privilege hierarchy that extends from extreme positive privilege for those at the top, oligarchs, major business CEOs and hedge fund managers to extreme negative privilege for those in despised minorities at the bottom.
Putting high skin melanin people into prison as quickly as possible for as long as possible and inflicting on them as much damage as possible up to and including death is as necessary as is the positive privilege for the owner class at the top.
Privilege is two edged blade. Positive privilege for one group is negative privilege for those who do not belong to that group. Negative privilege for a despised minority is on the other edge positive privilege for those who do not belong to that minority. If the minority is small the proportion of positive privilege per person of non members is small but any attempt to lessen the minority’s negative privilege will be opposed because it takes a small amount from respectable people.
We should stop focusing on racism and instead look at the broader problem of OTHERisms. Racism is just one of them, sexism/misogyny is another but the total number is probably infinite. An inevitable structure in any human brain is the THEM/US divide. Humans are constantly evaluating other humans (and indeed other animals and plants) as to on which side of the divide they exist and attributing stereotypes to them accordingly. Those on the THEM side are seen as inferior in ever good attribute and higher in every bad while those on the US side are viewed by default very sympathetically unless there exists overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The negative stereotypes are very powerful especially when people respond quickly in stressful situations. The stereotypes in the unconscious mind are the true sources of prejudicial ~isms. For example George Floyd died because he was a big black male and the four police were terrified of him and viewed him as having the superhuman powers of a high melanin version of the INCREDIBLE HULK. Quite likely they were afraid of him bursting out from under them and throwing them 30 metres in the air followed by neck braking falls. This is IMPLICIT RACISM or IMPLICIT OTHERISM which works absurdly exaggerated fears that the mind owner does not know that he has because he never examines them consciously. A lot of bad human behaviours are powered by STUPID and unexamined ideas in the unconscious. There is a very good book by psychologist R A Ellis titled “The New Guide to Rational Living” which expands on this idea.
The driving force behind the drug laws has always been OTHERISMs. The laws have never been intended to be used against GOOD PEOPLE like us but against BAD PEOPLE LIKE THEM, Blacks, Impertinent Youths, Mexicans, participants in illegal industries such as prostitution………,
Morality and Hypocrisy are Siamese twins who have much influence on politics and laws
Some people make me seriously regret TT rules. Don’t be that person.
Maybe this will assuage your regret. Unlike the above, what these ladies are saying can be translated into something that makes sense.
I need a beer.
Only 79 hours 26 minutes until Scotch O’Clock.
I’ll take one too please.
Thanks.
I’m adding that to my song rotation.
Post hoc narratives about how common and multidimensional circumstances are the result of a person’s race, but only with some people and not with others, are a supercharged mechanism for otherism. Not to mention for indulging those evil twins of morality and hypocrisy in alignment with culture. Unlike misguided laws with disparate outcomes this otherism is even more precisely the point of it, and even easier for privileged groups to perpetuate and reinforce it via media hegemony while skating above it. Tales of comic book villainy are a great tool that power uses to deflect systemic analysis and responsibility for its screwups.
Aside from making a lot of people think kindly of Democrats in the election season, I think Biden is putting a little pressure on Congress to conflict between the states and the Federal Government if only to get some $25 billions worth of business into the banking system where it can be monitored and taxed.
If you yank the tiller too hard on a big, lumbering boat the rudder just creates turbulence and drag in the water. This is especially true of creaky old-fashioned ships, where the sails do most of the work in determining the heading. But, if you want to take a different tack, you gotta start somewhere.
Yes.
Compound question. Compound answer: No, Yes.
It is not a question of right or wrong, but of politics. Biden runs this small action up the pole, then checks the mid-term poll numbers for effect. If Democratic numbers go up, there will be follow-on steps. If not, not.
“Biden runs”
A lot of lifting here.
In Libertarianism, one of the central concepts is the harm principle: the only reason to restrict the action of another individual is to prevent harm to others. If someone is harming themselves, you are only justified in attempting to persuade them.
This appears to justify removing the line altogether. However, legalization at the state level seems to be accompanied by the lack of any adequate regulation regarding the concentration of THC in the products sold. Even if regulations are on the books, I don’t see much enforcement. The store gets to put it’s bright green five-pointed leaf on the building and sell whatever product they have, provided someone can produce identification that he is of legal age.
This isn’t the same cannabis that Mr. Greenfield was smoking with the boys upstairs in Mary Donlon Hall when he heard about the whole affair. My concern is the letting people consume THC at ever increasing concentrations on a daily basis will result in more mental illness.
Some may say, “So what? They are only hurting themselves.” However, serious mental illness usually arrives accompanied by second order effects. Many mentally ill people break the law, attack other people for irrational reasons, get shot by a policeman so the policeman can safely return home to his family, or otherwise get placed in the only institutions left that will house them anymore–jail or prison.
Studies show that someone with a developing brain who consumes THC daily at a high concentration has a five percent chance of developing schizophrenia, which a serious mental illness. Also, let’s not forget paranoid personality disorder and various delusional disorders. Before anyone interposes that cannabis is still illegal for minors, science has shown us in the last two decades that the mind continues to develop until a person is twenty-five years old.
So, before we open the floodgates, renew our subscriptions to High Times, and step into the Brave New World, is it too much to ask that we adequately regulate the amount of THC in cannabinoids, so we can have fewer crazy people? In my practice over the last few years, I am seeing many more straight-up crazy people. Some of this is caused by the use of exotic precursor chemicals to create methamphetamine, but some of it is also due to seeing young people who have consuming loads of cannabis in the last few years. When I was a kid, the Democrats wanted to regulate everything that moved. What happened to those guys?
Mary Donlon Hall. Good times.
One man’s freedom is another malignant narcissist’s harm.
Concentration of THC is noted prominently on any legal cannabis products I have ever seen.
Sane cannabis users titrate their THC dosage by consuming less (or more) depending on the THC concentration noted, and their own experience with the drug.
No regulation of THC levels can deter insane users from consuming too much.
Often insane users are actually attempting to solve or mitigate their mental illness by consuming cannabis.
Making a law prohibiting high THC concentrations will not solve any problems caused by actually insane people consuming it.
A few years back I married into a family of weed smokers. MIL and FIL use(d) it to “control” pain, or so they claim. They were life long smokers and planned trips later in life around where they could get weed legally. My wife is a recreational smoker as well. Doesn’t really drink, but likes a toke or three.
Mom in law said it was good for pain and smoked until the day she died from stage 4 lung cancer. I am sure there was no correlation (sarcasm).
My father in law claims it helps with his bipolar, that and adderall are all he needs to be functional….says the guy who believes everyone is out to get him and who is never at fault for anything.
I have heard hour long soliloquies about the different strains, about percent’s of THC vs. CBD about hybrids, sativas vs. indica’s and how Arizona does a better job with their pot than Pennsylvania does and Colorado is the best .This is a man that will drive 2 hours out of the way because a dispensary is having a sale and he can get a senior discount on top of it.
I am even more opposed to personally trying pot now than I was before I married in (never tried it in the past, though I drank like a fish until I got sober 6 years ago). That being said, take it off schedule 1. Make it legal like alcohol. Tax the shit out of it like cigarettes’ and move on. But then again, I would say the same about other drugs as well…..So I guess, we remove the line.
Scott
Various other blog posts have commented on this today. One point raised is that Biden’s fiat applies only to Federal prisoners. The follow-on point is how many Federal prisoners are being held for simple possession? I think to draw Federal time you have to be doing some pretty serious stuff such as distribution, violent crime, etc.
Is there even one Federal prisoner being held for simple possession?
It’s already in the post, Steve.