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Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

No federal law is changing. This is a one time get out of jail free card. People arrested for the same crimes after he pardons current people in prison don't get the benefit.

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No, and that’s because he doesn’t have the power to unilaterally do that, but he is trying to get it rescheduled

> he is trying to get it rescheduled

Do you have a link about this? Because he's shown hostility towards marijuana legalization, promised to veto it if it was sent to him, and in the past supported draconian drug laws.

https://mobile.twitter.com/POTUS/status/1578097878094024712

Point 3.

Tweets do not official policy make. If you need examples, you need but examine his tweets all through 2019 and 2020 - they're loaded with promises and plans. This is certainly not exclusive to POTUS.

Show me a policy document along with a bill from that office and I'll consider it more than an election year symbolic gesture.

This feels like a too mean-spirited take. According to this[0] he may not need a bill, and in fact may have taken the first step

0: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2015/02/13/how-to-resc...

His tweets 2019 and 2020 are indeed "loaded with promises and plans", but that's because he was literally not president at that time. Now that he is president, tweets from @POTUS are intended and expected official statements. Sure he could be completely bullshitting with his tweets, but he could do the same with a "policy document"

(White House and executive offices don't produce "bills", other than signing the ones proposed and passed through Congress)

Policy or not, intent was clearly declared. Not vague statements, but specific actions including a direct callout to the secretary of HHS to initiate the rescheduling review.

Obviously we can only wait to see what comes next, but I'm not sure what more you'd want? The review process has to occur, so there's no additional "policy" to be had at the moment. Obviously there's a possibility that rescheduling doesn't happen as a result of that review, but that hardly seems likely given the current political and social climate around marijuana.

Seemed like a pretty straight-forward way to communicate "and this is step 2, which is a work in progress".

I think there's a huge difference between tweets with "promises and plans" (especially from before he was actually elected), and tweets saying "I have done this thing. I am doing this other thing."

It's reasonable to be cautious about a politician making a promise in anything but the most legally-binding possible way. It's not reasonable to straight-out call that politician a bald-faced liar if he hasn't demonstrated a propensity for such lies (unlike some I could easily name).

People can change their mind.

And when they do it like this it shows the are opportunist

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

He doesn’t technically have the unilateral power to prevent future people from being charged federally with simple possession, but in reality, he kind of does (while he’s president).

Sends a pretty clear message to any federal prosecutor that is deciding if they want to charge this. Obviously, the prosecutor can spend the time and effort on this if they want, but it’s time that will probably be better served doing something else if they don’t want to see their work wiped away by the stroke of a pen in the future.

Technically it's not a get out of jail free card, as I understand it, no one is actually held in jail for this right now. Though it does remove it from their records.

>no one is actually held in jail for this right now

6000+ people were.

He can and will suggest to the DOJ that they don’t charge anyone for simple possession of marijuana, and they won’t.

Edit: of course that’s temporary.

The scheduling of marijuana is changing.

It's being looked at, but that's not at this point guaranteed

That makes it sustainable.

Now the president can pardon people for this before every election!

It's a solid political play, and I don't recall seeing that done before (I've only been voting since '97). We'll likely see this kind of thing more often now.

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