Biden pardons thousands convicted of marijuana charges on federal lands and in Washington
President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of people who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia.
Lemmy sucks. You're whiney fucks. Enjoy the win. Both sides are not the same. This is an unfathomable event previously. Anyone remember Jeff Sessions first months in office? Stop removed and show some fucking gratitude. Thousands of people are being pardoned. Is it perfect and everything we want? No. Does that take away from the achievement? No.
Purity tests all the way down and it's why populism never actually works. You can't be happy, even a little bit, about incremental progress if the "real problem" hasn't been dealt with. That problem will always be broad and impossible to truly achieve outside of theory. You end up with an ideology just centered around anger and despair.
People who do this shit maintain positions they know are practically unworkable because the thing they fear most is actually having to govern and make difficult choices in the real world and then answer for the consequences of those decisions. It's much easier to just loudly state a preference for fantasy.
It just rings extremely hollow after he spent the last three years shoveling money at state police departments that are going to keep on harassing and brutalizing people by the tens of thousands for marijuana possession, not to mention the fact that he could reschedule and effectively legalize marijuana on a federal level but chooses not to do so
More generally speaking, you just can't be surprised that people are skeptical of Biden when his supporters constantly ignore context and straight up lie to pretend that he's someone he's not
"Lemmy sucks."
You are top comment. I always hated this "reddit sucks" attitude that everyone always adopted, especially when taking the most common and popular opinions on the platform.
There are a lot of right wing Poe's law trolls here pretending to be leftists, and a handful of people who get caught up in their privileged contrarian virtue. It's shocking to me that this isn't extremely obvious to more people here.
Enjoy the win.
No. The political racketeers that caused this problem tacitly admitting that they've destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives for no reason at all is in no way or shape any kind of "win."
When they start paying reparations to all the people they've victimized through these self-serving laws throughout the decades, then we can start talking about "wins."
are you genuinely politically impressed by this
at least our complaints are encouraging momentum rather than dusting off our hands and doing a smithers esque very good sir! because he pardoned people with fake charges that should've never existed that he and his VP gleefully enforced and implicitly defended for years and years
I completely disagree that your complaints spur a single thing. Every heard the phrase "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar"? Or how about if I get your thoughts on how to rear a child? Do you beat them, complain about their accomplishments constantly, or do you encourage and support them? Encouragement, support, and excitement do more to inspire change than any amount of complaints.
Incrementalism is the only bloodless way to achieve true progress. I embrace it, and celebrate these wins.
"Politically impressed"? Go away.
Momentum is incremental progress towards a goal, this is that. You've said nothing convincing to a rational adult. We don't put flags on our trucks that show him riding a dinosaur with his shirt off, we don't agree with everything, but it's general progress and we accept that. We accept AND we push for more.
Grow up.
Cringe
Cool. Now stop allowing companies with federal contracts to do drug testing for cannabis unless they also test for alcohol.
Also stop requiring marijuana be tested for security clearances for your own employees.
You had me at stop testing for cannabis.
This could, conceivably, be the hold up at federal level tbh. We have no current means by which we can objectively test for active impairment caused by THC...
Testing for alcohol is rare, and incident specific, because it's a measure of actual impairment. You aren't tested for alcohol to see if you've had a beer in the last 30 days, you're being tested to see if it's dangerous for you to be operating a vehicle, provide healthcare, carry a gun...
The basic principle behind alcohol testing is to determine actual impairment. The premise is that an agency is protecting others from dangers inherent in your being impaired.
The basic principle of drug testing is that the same danger from impairment is prevented by preventing impairment, but the premise is that any use is illegal. It's a "just in case" premise vs an actual matter of being presently impaired.
That fundamental difference is hugely notable in the case of DUI. How exactly do you mitigate the risk of DUI with THC? The current arguments in favor of legalization trend towards "it doesn't impair people as much", but that's a total cop out that doesn't address the issue, exactly the same way prohibition is.
We seriously need a solution to that, and I suspect it could very well be the "mystery cause" of federal legislators on the liberal side dragging their feet. They don't want to open the floodgates and make it unprosecutable to get in your car impaired, because even with an easy means to prosecute that if alcohol is the cause, it's still a huge issue... How bad will it be if it's effectively undetectable?
You want cops deciding based on how well you perform the little monkey dance? I fucking don't. I can't dance for shit perfectly sober...
That does make sense. I wonder if we can figure out a way to test if people are currently under the influence of THC rather than having possibly done it days before?
It sucks here in Indiana- if you have more than a nanogram THC in your system and you get in a serious auto accident, it counts as an OWI. I use medically, so I'm basically fucked if I ever get in a serious accident. Thankfully, I'm a good driver who has never been in more than a very low-speed fender bender when I was at fault and I wait until I'm not high anymore before I drive, but it really scares me. I refuse to drive at night unless it's a real emergency because I'm really scared of getting into a serious accident because my vision is impaired.
Honestly I've been saying this for years. I'm okay with legalization, but we don't have a test that isn't subjective to determine if someone is currently impaired. That would be a really good thing to have in place beforehand
I feel like if you have gone through with getting a prescription, at least you've shown good faith. But if you're going to shoot someone down for following through with the legal system it's kind of creating excuses to discriminate not on the basis of merit, but by imagined nonconformity, and that is really not the true point of either policy or law and order.
Just legalize marijuana at the federal level and admit the "war on drugs" is lost and was lost before it even started. That it really was yet another racist policy and the government is really really sorry for being shitty, again.
Even if they don't admit they were wrong, they can demonstrate it. Legalize mj, at a minimum (maybe let's do psychedelics next so those of us with mental health disorders can get some promising treatment some day soon). Pardon all people convicted of possession of said drugs. Set up a national program for addiction treatment. Hell while I am at it let's socialize mental healthcare. And establish UBI. I could go on...
the government is really really sorry
What gives you that impression? They aren't sorry, they're upset people said "fuck you" just like prohibition.
Drugs should all be legalized at the federal level, but I think the damage is already done. There is a defacto narco state from the US southern border to the southern tip of South America and it's largely been created out of US social policy. Now that "state" has actual state levels of funding, and in some cases weaponry, and it isn't a physical state so you can't exactly just go bomb it out of existence.
Americans don't have the wherewithal to address addiction as a health crisis. Just take a look outside in any American city and you'll see what I'm talking about. Addiction, poverty - half the country thinks we can just free market our way out of this, some part thinks we can just make all drugs illegal and the problem goes away. We're doomed.
Drugs should all be legalized at the federal level,
We should but it's unlikely anytime soon.
..but I think the damage is already done.
Very much so. The war on drugs has done wonders to continue the joys of Jim Crow under yet another name. Even if there was a full stop now it would be generations before those affected were back on level. Unless the government went nuts and actually approved something like reparations but that's a pipe dream.
Gramps should legalize it.
If only to take the carrot away from the libertarians.
That requires federal legislation.
Biden is bound by the Controlled Substances Act, same as anyone else.
be creative. play the damn game like the republicans. simply put out an executive order saying 'why would you arrest anyone for weed in this day and age'. no one with true power and will is bound by a piece of paper. the republicans aren't; the democrats should consider doing the same with saner policies
No one was freed from prison under last year’s action, no federal prisoners are eligible for release as a result of Friday’s pardon. But the order expands the grounds on which pardons are issued, which they can use to build the groundwork for a fundement to layer the different levels that they can then use as a foundation to build upon. However this might take some time. In the meantime please be patient.
Biden, the president doing a good thing.
Why did he wait until an upcoming election to do it?
Biden has passed a lot of good policy: Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, Respect for Marriage Act, American Rescue Plan, Student Debt Relief, and more. He has also put fair judges on the bench and one of the supreme court--Trump and republicans put judges to take away rights from women and workers.
Look, I wish Biden were more progressive and I don't support everything he's done. If Republicans get control of the government, they plan to move us to a Christian Nation with all the power focused on their president. I just hope everyone votes these Republicans out of office before they make America "Great" Again.
Would you rather he didn't do it?
Wish we could get this over with and just legalize it. The attitudes with it have changed. The majority want it treated like alcohol.
Modern elections (any really) aren't about the majority, they are about suburban housewives in Ohio and Pennsylvania as the only group that still morally blows in the wind on the rational adult versus fascism spectrum.
They are the people that can't immediately accept sweeping change and react violently to "just legalize it". They fundamentally don't care about legal weed on balance, but they need baby step progress to stay comfortable enough to keep a firm foot on the rational adult side of that discussed spectrum.
It's not fair, but it is objective reality.
That bit about suburban housewives is not correct. Swing voters are more likely to be young and male, and there isn't much distinction between rural/suburban/urban.
https://www.kff.org/other/issue-brief/data-note-swing-voters/
I feel like impairment should be based on eye movement, motor movement, reaction time and focus, like how quickly you can readjust a knob to 1.1v after while someone's eating chips or blasting a siren next to you. If your getting it done in under 1 minute your fine, but if you take over one minute to do it you may or may not be stoned as fuck, but your definitely incapacitated in some form.
I hate the emphasis of "simple possession charges", like there aren't situations where someone gets charged with multiple misdemeanors or other petty crimes while carrying an 8th. When Minnesota legalized this year they went the route of "simple possession" for pardons and exoneration, only about 3 people had their sentences ended. To me that indicates they're afraid of being labeled "weak on crime" instead of doing the right thing.
If you commit another crime while possessing, you'll be charged with said crime and possession.
You should still be cleared of the possesion charge, while staying locked up for whatever else you might have done.
I could be wrong, but I think it's possible for situations to exist where the other thing only becomes a crime because of the possession. Maybe something like being charged for carrying a gun during the commission of a crime, where the crime being committed was having marijuana.
This is a good second step. The first was asking the DEA to look into rescheduling.
But it is nothing more than the second step. The third step would probably be to pass the SAFE Banking act. And we should not let up pressure until full recreational legalization is a reality in all states.
Democrats will happily let this be the end of reforms if we let them.
Federal legalization/rescheduling is the only option. States that do not want legal recreational marijuana will keep it illegal and keep their cash cows fed.
It would take a Supreme Court ruling to force full marijuana legalization across the US and there is zero chance of that.
I didn't put a deadline on letting up pressure. Republicans eventually got what they wanted on Roe via the Supreme Court by not letting up pressure. There is no good reason we can't do the same.
There's a number of bad reasons, though. Principal among them is that centrists don't want to disrupt the status quo, even if it means preserving racist policies like the war on drugs.
President Joe Biden pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia
So that pardons people who were convicted of using or possessing while located in one of the red areas here?
Aside from D.C. itself, that's what, Land under the control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Defense, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Tennessee Valley Authority, and a few others?
I guess, in the words of Angie Martinelli "That's not nothin!".
Hopefully this reaches the right ears and starts more change:
Biden on Friday reiterated his call on governors and local leaders to take similar steps to erase marijuana convictions.
The number of people we have in prison for this is bonkers and the fact that it makes life as a productive member of society much more difficult is absolutely ridiculous.
I was disqualified from a job offer recently because I was honest and told them I took a gel capsule containing THC and CBD for sleep. I took it over 5 months ago and purchased it from the cannabis shop down the street. I put several months of maximum effort to land that job. I feel stupid for being honest with them in hindsight. It's ridiculous. Cannabis is legal in my state.
A small step but hopefully a step towards legalisation.
This is Soros-funded Alinsky-style tactics to bring about the Marxist state!!!!1111ELEVENTYONE111 -wingers, probably.
Great! But let’s also pardon sellers. it was illegal to buy and sell, but only buyers get pardoned? pardon buyers and sellers, and let sellers open up their own pot shops. or, are we not a meritocracy? (obviously we are not and this is a great first step but it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows). You’re all going to vote Biden anyway because not doing so means you voted for trump. y’all are smarter than that.
Yes, in a bureaucracy, it's CYA all the way down. You pardon possession, then you point to that as precedent to say, "small amount sellers are basically the same, let's pardon them" a while later. It isn't ideal, but it's objective reality. If you have a better way, organize people to change the broader system (and voters) to be more nimble.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of people who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia, the White House said Friday, in his latest round of executive clemencies meant to rectify racial disparities in the justice system.
Biden is also granting clemency to 11 people serving what the White House called “disproportionately long” sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.
Biden said his actions would help make the “promise of equal justice a reality.”
“Criminal records for marijuana use and possession have imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities,” Biden said.
The White House said thousands more would be eligible under Friday’s action.
Biden reiterated his call on governors and local leaders to take similar steps to erase marijuana convictions.
The original article contains 220 words, the summary contains 134 words. Saved 39%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It's about time. Now it's time to reschedule
I hate it when people say Washington and they mean District of Columbia as a resident of the state... at least say Washington DC in the title for fucks sake
Why did he wait until an upcoming election?
It’s easy to see this kind of behavior as bad on the surface, but isn’t “enact policies that make people want to vote for you” pretty much the job description of a politician?
these demopublicans will throw any rotting scraps to the masses and ate it gets
all this fucker is doing is getting votes by saying keywords over and over same as the other demopublicans
all we have ever done is throw this issue around like climate change and human rights
2024 same shit all over again as every other election since who knows how far back
want to know who will win? certainly not the citizens
what good thing? who does this help? just a few people but enough for everyone to go yay biden
him and harris both have been part of the fuel keeping the current drug war active this is just some preelection scraps he throwing around to get votes without accomplishing anything
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Joe_Biden_administration
biden wants this to be a state by state issue just like voting and abortion and you name it
as usual this will leave a lot of people screwed and dependent on the geographic lottery for rights hope you are born in a good state otherwise its your fault and you should go vote
It's called federalism. It provides everyone the most freedom and follows both republican thinking in small government, less bureaucratic paperwork for the top, and more democratic policy making.
eg. if you live in a state where there's a huge meth problem, but no marijuana problem it doesn't make sense to be telling cops to keep chasing the one stoner in town or to go after some asian guy who just looks suspicious for wearing sunglasses.
Allowing for state by state discretion also means that the DEA and local police can be free to collect more targeted and detailed information to hunt who is producing more suffering.
