Yep! And IIRC, states that have fully legalized marijuana still have has big headaches dealing with the fact that it's outlawed by the feds.
He's forgiving student debt without doing free college, and pardoning those convicted of simple possession without preventing somebody tomorrow from being arrested for simple possession.
Has he made sure that people with drug convictions are eligible for student loans? That seems like a conjunction of the two things that he's half-assed. If he hasn't, there's no one in the administration that actually cares about this, it's just pure midterm pandering.
edit:
I think this may be what I was looking for: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents//2021/06/17/2021-1...
> This letter provides information about the early implementation of the FAFSA Simplification Act's removal of Selective Service and drug conviction requirements for Title IV eligibility, as well as actions that institutions must take as these changes are implemented in phases across award years 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024. Certain other aspects of the law being implemented are discussed in separate communications.
Except when contradicted by the constitution or established legal process as a Party state.
The Senate alone.
> Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action
Rescheduling it subject to treaty restrictions from treaties in force, but Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.
Amending the treaty requires a bunch of other countries plus the Senate, and modifying the status of marijuana inconsistent with the treaty while it is in force would take a change in law by Congress (but would violate the treaty.)
Note that the current treaty status only requires medical use / prescription requirements, so it could be substantially less restricted than it currently is federally without running into treaty issues.
Can you give an example? I am not aware of any authority granted to the executive to override the legislature in this way. Is there an explicitly granted loophole or are these cases of executive overreach?
“Both Congress and the Administration have the ability to alter marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance.”
edit: but apparently, besides that or whatever other options the executive branch review discovers, or whatever the judicial branch comes up with, you are right
https://businessofcannabis.com/2022/09/16/us-court-of-appeal...
Instead, they just throw treats to their base when they're in trouble. Treats that are written on water. If I hear another thing about the Dreamers.
People keep saying that he can't do anything because he's not a dictator. He can't do anything because he doesn't believe in it, and even if he did doesn't have any ideological standards for his Congressional party that would ever get him majority support for anything that doesn't have lobbying checks behind it.
And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?
Congress is gridlocked. Incumbents almost never lose their seats. The people who care enough to vote and support the issues are already voting as hard as they can.
This announcement? This is him doing what he can, both in terms of his legal ability to change things, as the chief executive, and in terms of using the bully pulpit, making clear where his and his administrations' priorities lie.
Basically, it sounds like you're saying "if the President can't force the legislation he wants to materialize and get through a Congress that is historically dysfunctional, that means he doesn't really care about the issue."
This can always be an excuse. Things can't be done because they can't be done. The fact is that he's giving speeches about how much he hates China and Russia, and not about legalizing pot.
He's also one of the engineers of the shitty situation that we're in, he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career, so I'm not ever going to be convinced by this woe is me lark. He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.) The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.
> how, exactly, do you propose he do that
The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.
Ok sure, not only that, but he is the president who has the least number of spare brain cells to devote to an issue that he opposes on principle.
And yet of all the presidents we've had in the past 4 decades, it wasn't the B-movie star, nor the frat boy, not the draft dodger(s), nor the iconoclast reality TV star, nor even our first and only Black president -- but Biden the Old Catholic who actually got this seemingly simple reform with simple possession of pot.
As you said, he's the guy with the least reason and capacity to get it done, and yet here we are. How are you managing to complain that what he did was so simple and miniscule, and yet no one else came close to doing it?
> The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.
I wouldn't be too sure that Biden had staff more devoted toward drug reform than Obama [0]. But I guess you're stuck with that position since you can't fathom that Biden personally pushed for reform. So how did Biden end up with this successful drug reform team, just random chance? If Biden is so stridently anti-drug, so absolutely useless toward pushing reform as you think he must be, then how did that not trickle down to his senior staff and who they hired and what the prioritized?
> The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.
Politics is all about building consensus through compromise and collaboration. Biden may hate marijuana reform, but he prioritized and executed in a way that past presidents didn't, ostensibly because he knew it was something that lots of people love. How is that not great politics?
[0] https://www.marijuanamoment.net/new-book-obama-considered-de...
If this is true, then this is politics working as intended.
Seriously, that is exactly how the system is supposed to work: The officials we elect do what we, the people, want, not just push their personal beliefs at all costs.
I would 1000% rather elect someone I agree with on 50% of issues, who is willing to be swayed by popular opinion, than someone I agree with on 80% of issues, who is going to try to enforce their personal beliefs as law no matter what the people actually want.
As for Biden "knowing how to do politics", you might want to spend some time studying Biden's astonishing legislative results over the past few months. He's apparently quite good at politics.
Just be honest: you have 937 axes to grind and you are desperate to avoid giving Biden any credit, ever, for anything.
That’s exactly what he just did with the pardons. He’s signaling to voters that he wants to legalize it and needs the right partners in Congress to make it happen. From your other comments I don’t get the impression you’re open to discussing the implications so much as you just want to complain about Biden.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fda-chief-approved-oxycontin...
You also really need to do some homework on the US House and the degree to which gerrymandering has made it completely impossible for your dreams of "appeals to voters" to work.
He is also directing the AG and Secretary of HHS is reexamine the scheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act which is the process in law which is needed to change the legal regime applicable to it without Congressional action.
He’s not a dictator who can rewrite law at a whim.
From the press release[1]:
Make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers by:
Cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans. The Department of Education is proposing a new income-driven repayment plan that protects more low-income borrowers from making any payments and caps monthly payments for undergraduate loans at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income—half of the rate that borrowers must pay now under most existing plans. This means that the average annual student loan payment will be lowered by more than $1,000 for both current and future borrowers.
Fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program by proposing a rule that borrowers who have worked at a nonprofit, in the military, or in federal, state, tribal, or local government, receive appropriate credit toward loan forgiveness. These improvements will build on temporary changes the Department of Education has already made to PSLF, under which more than 175,000 public servants have already had more than $10 billion in loan forgiveness approved.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
With regard to Marijuana and the controlled substances act, Biden could issue an executive order to change the schedule of any substance right away. He could also issue an EO for the DOJ/IRS to change any regulations regarding marijuana that impact legal states or MJ related prosecutions.
He has a lot more power than this action implies, especially regarding things that aren't made law via statue but regulations set by executive branch departments.
One of the early mini-scandals of the Biden White House was how "dozens of young White House staffers" were in trouble because they had believed "initial indications" that casual pot use would not automatically disqualify them from the job. And that seemed like a sure sign that Biden would be a real hard ass on pot use. Only 5 staffers out of "hundreds" were ultimately disqualified from the policy, and given what Biden has done today, we have some assurance he really is going to be sympathetic and reasonable about pot.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-white-house-sandbags-sta...
He’s directed the officials that are empowered by law to change its status without Congress doing anything to begin the process by which that would happen. So, its not just a symbolic act that may effect that sooner or later.
https://www.denverpost.com/2013/08/29/federal-government-won...
> Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole wrote in a memo sent Thursday to federal prosecutors that it will not be a priority to block landmark marijuana-legalization laws in the two states. The federal government also will not make it a priority to close down recreational marijuana stores, so long as the stores abide by state regulations, according to the memo.
The Attorney General de-prioritizing a crime sounds like a cop-out, but eliminating the incentive for federal agents to chase down a type of crime means those agents effectively won't enforce those laws...because they'll get dinged for wasting time that should be spent on actual priorities.
Here's an example of how the federal restriction can still be a pain to Colorado pot stores:
> Because pot is still illegal federally, banks will likely continue to refuse marijuana business accounts, employers can continue to fire workers who smoke pot off-the-job and marijuana users who receive federal aid or live in federal housing will remain at risk.
IIRC, it wasn't at all uncommon for state residents to think that they could smoke worry free b/c of state legalization, only to realize too late that their employer technically receives federal aid and now had the right to fire them. And even if the the U.S. Attorney General says "nah we probably won't care about that"...a lot of employers are going to err on the side of caution.
Since Biden said that he's directed the government to look into things that are on the path to legalization, that mentality is likely to trickle down to every part of the government. Private employers might still be anal though.
I live in California, where marijuana is legal.
The headaches here are that federal police sometimes go bonkers if they find totally minor stuff like edibles or paraphernalia during some sort of inspection or traffic stop that they do on federal land.
Oh, easy, just don’t carry anything on federal land.
Not so easy.
- Any BLM land is federal. Some people take their guns to BLM land for shooting. Better not have any marijuana related stuff on you when you do that (even if you’re just accompanying and not shooting).
- Any national park is federal land.
- Some local extracurricular activities happen on federal lands. Little league sports teams, Boy Scouts, etc. Again, not that you have to be using at the time, but if you get into an accident at one of these facilities and the federal police sees the state-legal stuff in your car, you can be charged with a federal crime for that.
- Any federal building and attached properties like parking lots. For example, if you’re going to the VA to pick up a friend who just had some medical treatment and have an accident, the investigating federal officer can charge you if you have state-legal marijuana goods.
- Sometimes you don’t even know when you are on or are traveling through federal land, so you can’t always prepare. For example, the Laguna Seca race track is near (borders on?) federal lands with federal roads and federal police, but the scope of the federal lands is not always clearly marked. So choosing which roads you take to the track determines whether you are breaking the law or not.
- Most major airports are federal. As such, even a flight from SFO to LA is supposed to be free of state-legal marijuana.
I don’t know how often possession is prosecuted in these situations, but there are enough stories bouncing around that it’s slightly concerning given that, imho, the number of stories should be zero.
The solution is to have the message from the top being that they don’t want to see these charges ever in CA and similar stares (waste of time), and any extracurricular behavior like roughing someone up or treating them like a criminal will result in an administrative action against the officer.
I doubt this will happen soon.
I think the best we can hope for is for prosecutors and senior officers to be consistently dismissive about any low key possession charges that junior officers make.
Or, to put it a different way. It's not that it's legal in CA. It's that the state won't do anything about it.