Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana
whitehouse.gov
whitehouse.gov
As a gesture, this seems fine. But the continued presence of cannabis on Schedule I makes an absolute mockery out of our entire code of laws.
[0]: https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...
Edit: major caveat, all the data harvesting and background check firms generally do not proactively purge their data sets as they’re supposed to. It’s your obligation to follow up with every single one of them individually, and there are a whole lot of them, they operate under the radar, and it’s hard to contact them. Finally it’s impossible to verify they actually did.
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to set up a service which does. Do the verification I mean. :)
Are there some examples of this happening that you can point to? :)
Expungement is a judicial remedy that is rarely granted by the court and cannot be granted within the Department of Justice or by the President.
if they 'are supposed to' then it sounds like a potential civil liability if they have not done what they were supposed to do.
>It’s your obligation to follow up with every single one of them individually
or a lawyer could find some firms that did not do as they were supposed to, and some people that would have standing to sue, and ka-ching? This of course depends if my understand of "are supposed to" is correct.
If anything it'll help some folks to have a their records cleaned up.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/bidens-marijuana-pardons-won...
But the quoted statistic is confusing. Under what specifics would 300 people = 0.5% of the total prison population? As I understand it, the total prison population of the USA is over 1 million, and the subset designated 'federal prisoners' is, by itself, over 200,000.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html
Note that terminology in this space is very important and subtle. 7 million people are arrested each year, and > 600K are sent to prison, but the total number of people in prison (and number that are incarcerated one way or another) is much lower than those numbers suggest. The total incarcerated population is about 1.75 million.
If we believe chatgpt, then the median time in prison is a couple of months.
I'm unsure about the math: "The arrival rate $\lambda$ is the rate at which people arrive in the queue, and the service rate $\mu$ is the rate at which people are served and leave the queue. In a stable system, the service rate must be greater than the arrival rate, otherwise the queue will grow indefinitely.
Given that the total number of people in the queue $n$ is 1750000 and the arrival rate $\lambda$ is 600000 people per year, we can find the service rate $\mu$ by dividing the total number of people in the queue by the arrival rate:
$\mu = \frac{n}{\lambda} = \frac{1750000}{600000} \approx 2.92$ people per year.
This means that on average, about 2.92 people are served and leave the queue every year.
The median waiting time in the queue can be calculated using the formula for the median of an exponential distribution, which is $\frac{\ln(2)}{\mu}$.
So, the median waiting time in the queue in years is $\frac{\ln(2)}{2.92} \approx 0.237$ years."
It's probably mostly people getting arrested multiple times.
But yeah, there's a lot of arrests where police in other countries would have just ID'd people and sent them on their way. Arrests are simply the default operating procedure in the US, which is likely related to the fact that the lack of reliable national ID makes it harder to identify people on the spot.
We don’t. It’s usually not hard to source actual statistics (and when it is, that’s usually an indicator that ChatGPT is completely wrong).
> "If the recommendation is approved, marijuana would no longer be listed as a dangerous substance like heroin or LSD and it would reduce or potentially eliminate criminal penalties for possession. The decision rests with the DEA, which has rarely, if ever, rejected a rescheduling recommendation from HHS."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2023/10/10/schedule...
The guy is President, not king. He's supposed to delegate those sorts of policy decisions to experts. Ruling by consensus, not fiat, is a _good thing_. It's like having a change advisory board or code review process vet changes before they get deployed in production.
The bit about performing for votes is a circular argument with no way to refute it. You could say the same thing about any elected official.
The president only has the power to pardon people convicted or accused of violating federal law and prosecuted in federal court.
The problem is that nearly all people arrested for simple possession of marijuana aren't charged under federal law nor prosecuted in federal court. They are charged under state law that similarly outlaws marijuana possession and prosecuted in state court. The president does not have the power to pardon convictions and punishment in state court.
Our constitution does not define the breadth and depth of emergency powers and it would be up for both congress and SCOTUS to decide that the president can’t do that.
I would hope that a president would just say fuck it and try this though. As much as I want things to be done “the right way”, I value lives of folks more than my neurodivergent desire to have things done neatly.
No state or federal court is likely to respect or uphold such an abuse of power as long as US democracy remains intact … and while US democracy is very much in jeopardy right now, it won’t vanish before the next president takes over - Biden will follow the rules of the democratic system.
No, he can't.
> Our constitution does not define the breadth and depth of emergency powers
In our system, federal powers not defined in the Constitution do not exist.
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It is likely that if an action like this is taken, feathers will be rustled. However if that rustling would impact anything is completely up in the air.
No, emergency powers that actually exist are components of Constitutionally enumerated powers and, for the President, are mostly spelled out in statute law passed by Congress under its Constitutionally enumerated powers.
There is no source of powers for the US government outside of the Constitution.
What next? Send in the army?
Did the Federal Government send in the military to enforce the federal 55 mph speed limit? No, your state would just get cut off from federal funding (funding for which, BTW, came from the state’s citizens to begin with).
So, don’t let ‘em out? Have fun funding the housing of the pardoned with your own state’s dollars. Is it worth that much to you, Governor It-is-the-principle-not-the-money?
This pardon is for the entire United States, at least at the federal level. I don’t think kids sitting in a county jail for brining a joint to school in west Texas are going anywhere, though!
The first is https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title21/html..., which covers the whole country.
The next two are DC specific.
And the last is specific to possession on federal properties.
So no, the headline is not overselling the implications. If you simply possessed marijuana and were convicted under federal law, your case is going to be pardoned.
I can't quite tell if this applies to military convictions. That would be the other area where the Federal government takes the time to prosecute something as minor as mere possession or use.
Another interesting question: does this actually pardon, or is it more like an open call for applications? It looks to me like you'd want to get that pardon certificate from the WH Pardon lawyer well before the next election.
What other places outside of DC does federal law apply to?
(without the need for it to be interstate or some other such clause that is normally required for federal statutes to apply)
Can the president pardon crimes on reservations?
Even in legal states, you can get a simple possession charge on federal land [0].
[0] https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/olympic/news-events/?cid=STEL...
In theory, anything owned by the federal government is under federal law. This means federal court houses, branches of the fed, federal waters (anything above 3 geographical miles from shore), national parks, etc. Sometimes law enforcement is delegated to state local authorities though.
According to the report that preceded this action, more than 75% of all federal possession convictions were prosecuted in Arizona. Apparently it was just a rogue jurisdiction.
There are a number of totally bonkers details scattered around this report. https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...
Cannabis has been legal in DC for 8 years. See Initiative 71.
No, because it would still violate the UCMJ. The UCMJ would have to change.
However, it still doesn't solve the overarching issue of draconian drug laws.
He worked as a mover and moved someone onto a military base (in a decriminalized state). He forgot he had his weed in his jacket pocket when they got searched entering the base. Didn't get jail, but did get probation and a record of it.
The president can pardon any offense against the united states except impeachment. State offenses have always been left to governors to pardon but states are what make the united states and as such state offenses while violating only state law, they are an offense against a state that is part of the union and affect a citizen of the union, as such the president has ulitmate power to pardon.
This is similar to how state legal dispute or prosecution can ultimately be decided by the supreme court of the united states. It does not stop at the state's supreme court.
If trump gets elected next year for example, he can pardon himself of his upcoming likely conviction in georgia. Else you have a situation where in 2028 as soon as he leaves office he becomes a wanted criminal.
Presidents know that pardoning a stare criminal is overriding state law and alienating voters from that state and risking rifts in the union.
I believe the president supersedes state governors in every power they have except things like appointments and firings at the state level.
> Does the President have authority to grant clemency for a state conviction? No. The President’s clemency power is conferred by Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which provides: “The President . . . shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Thus, the President’s authority to grant clemency is limited to federal offenses
> The Constitution grants the president the power to pardon "offenses against the United States".[5] An offense that violates state law, but not federal law, is an offense against that state rather than an offense against the United States; however, the Supreme Court has never ruled on this matter or in the President's power to grant a habeas corpus petition for a state offense where it has been denied by a federal court.
If you consider english common law and the absolute nature of the pardon power, including presumptive crimes then this is an untested grey area. If the power was limited, the limit would have been stated. The current consensus is that the limit is implied, but an argument can be made that since english kings had pardon power over their whole domain, the same is implied when stating "offenses against the united states".
Federal authority supersedes state authority in every other case, if this was different it should have been stated so as it is a deviance. But ultimately this would come down to a supreme court opinion.
Oh it will have a huge effect politically. Biden can talk about how he is compassionate and fighting the injustice of federal marijuana crimes.
It's perfectly politically. Zero cost, and lots of benefit.
However, nothing stops the same from happening to someone tomorrow. The past several administrations have been relying too heavily on executive fiat for the optics.
The DEA needs to reschedule it. Anything else is at best a band-aid, if not simple lip service to buy votes.
Marijuana can be rescheduled without an act of Congress; what is on the table is not full legalization (which, AFAIK, could also be done within the executive, because IIRC drugs can be descheduled by the same process for rescheduling) but rescheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III.
And by "on the table", I mean the first step -- FDA recommendation to DEA -- has already been done.
With that said, they aren’t proposing to grant federal legality to the state-legal recreational marijuana market. They are planning to reclassify it from Schedule I (no recognized medical use) to Schedule III (the same category as anabolic steroids or testosterone and less restricted than Adderall), so the proposed federally legal way to get it would need a prescription and dispensing by a pharmacy or doctor.
Just to clarify, current use of marijuana is a disqualification for a security clearance. Past use of marijuana is not a disqualifier. When I was a younger man I used marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine and MDMA. Several of them very frequently. I disclosed all of this prior use and was able to get multiple security clearances through the years.
I no longer have nor will in the future have a security clearance so I now enjoy my legal weed.
The entire theme of this thread is "nothing stops the same from happening tomorrow". One president can order the DEA to reschedule it, and then the next can undo that work just as easily. We need a law, not an executive fiat. Most of the country is in favor of legalization, including most republican voters, so you'd think it would be easy to get the house on board, had it not been co-opted by right-wing extremists.
The House doesn't have to pass it, resecheduling is an executive action. (Congress could act to block it by legislation, and there is a streamlined process for doing that for reg changes in the Congressional Review Act but, it would take both Houses and -- since presumably the President will support his own administration's regulation -- sufficient supermajorities to overcome a veto.)
1. That Ukraine winning against Russia is part of United States national security.
2. That the United States providing funding to Ukraine would enable them to win against Russia.
Is that correct?
I hope this pardon doesn’t dilute the will for more substantive drug policy reform.
Yeah sure, I agree with you that proclamations and executive orders are inherently vulnerable to the whims of whomever happens to hold the office and have no place in a democracy.
But the legislative branch, as it currently operates, is not much different. In practice it results in huge pendulum swings and deadlocks, making every 2 years (because midterms) a nail biting event for the populous because hard fought rights and legislation can be undone in the blink of an eye.
As someone who grew up in a coalition country, it’s saddening to see how people around me here in the US are constantly in a state of anxiety, filled with despair like someone who’s awaiting the return of an abusive spouse from work, wondering what will happen this time.
If we somehow could get rid of the FPTP system in our legislative system, then we can rid ourselves from the two party system. Not only will this significantly lessen things like gerrymandering, and the power of lobbying, but it would force parties to form a coalition because it’s less likely that one single party holds the majority of seats.
Parties would have to actually debate each other and try to convince each other, make concessions on all sides, in order to form a coalition.
The result of this is a more steady course in government policy, with sweeping pendulum swings being rarer and the changes being made being more nuanced.
Subsequently the citizenry doesn’t have to be on high alert 24/7 and the country can function more like a modern democracy.
And next thing in the agenda would be judicial reform.
Until then, both the legislative branch and the executive branch will subject us to whims and other pendulum swings.
The DEA needs to have this authority rescinded. They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.
It's the federal version of the Siebert strategy and it's completely injust.
If that's their logic then someone there can't do math. Between fentanyl, other opioids, and meth they have plenty to do.
If we lower the scheduling of opioids to Schedule IV, fentanyl usage in the United States would drop almost entirely within a month. Importing clean prescription drugs from other countries would have low enough risk that the reward would be easily met. Odds are, it would also undercut wider organized drug crime.
You may find this article in The Economist worth a read:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/10/12/joe-biden-is-to...
Second, stepping down from fent to heroin, which I think is what you're implying, is not going to happen that fast and frankly the way you phrased this whitewashes an entire series of events that happened that gave fentanyl the dominance that it has as a street drug; the prescription pill to fentanyl pipeline is one built from a cost and strength. For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.
The scheduling of the drug is irrelevant to the problem that there are and will be people who illegally manufacture and sell meth and fent. The DEA has plenty of those people to go after, even if we legalize and regulate every drug today. Why? Cost. The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.
> For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.
Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin because of supply-side constraints: specifically, fentanyl is produced in larger quantities for pharmaceutical purposes, and the illegal markets are structured in a way that promotes the distribution of fentanyl over the distribution of heroin. However, that does not mean that fentanyl is inherently cheaper in an abstract sense. If legal restrictions were lifted, both fentanyl and heroin would be dramatically cheaper than either one is today.
This is, incidentally, another argument in favor of maintenance programs. Almost all of the indirect harms associated with illicit drug use, and many of the direct ones, are a consequence of the legal status and the expense (both financial and nonfinancial) associated with them.
Clinical trials present overwhelming evidence that, when provided with a low-cost, pharmaceutical grade supply of heroin, users are able to hold down stable jobs, maintain permanenent housing, etc., all things that they previously struggled with due to having to spend so much time, effort, and money in order to address what is fundamentally a medical issue for them.
> The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.
This is more or less the "gateway drug" theory, and it's simply incorrect. There is no "pipeline" of stimulants, and to the extent that one can even be argued to exist, methamphetamine is not the "final stop" in one.
I can see your argument about cost, but I think it ignores that, for instance, tranq is now being used in combination with fent. The reason for that isn't cost, it's entirely strength and chemically addictive properties. I think ignoring those kind of factors falls squarely outside of harm reduction. Where your argument with cost runs foul is in states like California where the legalization and subsequent regulation of the drug shot it's cost up. I'd argue marijuana probably doesn't need that kind of regulation, but chemically addictive substances I think do.
"Xylazine proliferated as a response to the shorter fentanyl highs, with drug sellers using it to extend the high & mimic a traditional heroin experience."
https://twitter.com/SyringeAccess/status/1626623755329097728...
But ideally we have the solution on two fronts. The DEA should still reschedule it. But Congress should also seriously implement a law decriminalizing it.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2023/07/31/dea-hea...
Obviously it’s intentional that it’s hard to pass things, and legitimately controversial things should be difficult to pass (and shouldn’t happen by executive fiat), but there are 2nd and 3rd order interests overriding what should be the 1st order interest of effective legislation.
Among these 2nd/3rd order interests: not looking bad to your party, making the other party look bad to their constituents, not upsetting some specific demagogues, not losing personal or party power at all costs, winning dunks in social media, looking good for the camera, ensuring that no third party could emerge, ensuring that if the other party gains power that they are incapable of exercising it, etc
Rumor has it that is in the works, but the fact that it has taken so long starts and ends with the executive office.
That said, Congress decriminalizing it entirely is definitely something that is going to take too long, and will also be entirely the fault of Congress.
The DEA is entirely under the control of the executive. So if you want a more permanent solution, the only one is legislative, and that is extremely unlikely to happen even if there were extremely broad public support.
Rescheduling buys more time, and unlike other executive orders, is actually in line with the intent of Congress via the controlled substances act.
Still long odds but we technically don't HAVE to do it with Congress.
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/artic...
Constitutional amendment is far harder than congressional legislation.
If there is a single negative consequence from this pardon, some sort of Willy Horton moment for Biden, it will definitely derail the path to decriminalization and strengthen the resolve of the opposition.
I support pardons for miscarriages of the procedures of justice, not for freeing incarcerated people for actions that are still considered crimes. I guess "hooray, our team won today" is what I am supposed to be saying; time will show us the good or bad of having chosen the shortcut.
Getting the DEA to reschedule it would involve more time and more influence than direct power.
That said, I think he should do both, AND that issuing this pardon may double as a good way of influencing the DEA.
Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...
Just musings don't get too aflame over them...
[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/americas-heaviest-drinkers-consume-...
Illegal means that we don't want people to help, it means we don't want them to do something between don't like it.
Otherwise it doesn't make sense that the result is jail as jail is for punishment (it shouldn't) and not for rehabilitation.
Your point being?
Some will say "It should be high" but in the realworld we need a pragmatic approach that balances difficulty of proof vs innocent people incarcerated. It's my assertion that the only system which has 0 chance of false positives is the one which incarcerates no one. So it's about finding a good minima / balance.
And how about shifting the discussion from prohibition and control of use to the democatization of healthcare access for people to heal from addiction, if we are so interested in the welfare of addicts at this point?
Yes, the harm done to addicts will probably increase. There's always trade offs. I think people on the pro-legalization side are not doing enough to address this.
One of the problems with public discourse is that each side doesn't want to give an inch to the other side. I think a lot of people who support legalization of cannabis kinda know that harms to addicts might increase, but they're afraid that if they mention that then that will just give a talking point to the prohibitionists.
Both sides are guilty of misusing or ignoring facts and concerns that don't benefit their preferred take on the issue. However, it seems to me the prohibitionists are far more egregious when it comes making bad arguments.
"Illegal but not criminal" for a drug just means a very clumsily implemented tax, if you want to do that, it would strictly be better to just do a tax.
> Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...
Eliminating crimes whose main use is as an end-run around probable cause (for arrest) and proof beyond a reasonable doubt (for conviction) on other crimes (and thus, which exist to be selectively used to end-run due process) is an unqualified good thing.
Then don't prosecute them. It's supposed to be hard to convict people.
For the vast majority of drug users that are not addicted, this is obvious.
And for the addicts, criminalization is the last thing they need. Deterrence might prevent a few people from getting addicted, but not many. A lot of drug addiction is downstream of homelessness and mental health issues meaning the illegality is a very weak deterrent for the most vulnerable.
If we pushed even half of the money spent policing the war on drugs into homelessness support, mental health services, and addiction counseling and harm minimization like needle exchanges, we’d see a huge reduction in harm.
The current regime is not really interested in harm reduction; there is no effort to compare interventions based on objective harm metrics. Instead non-harm metrics like arrest rates and usage are chased. The policies start from Puritanism and historical racism and justify themselves claiming to care about harm after the fact.
To your second point… I think the racial discrimination baked into the history of drug enforcement should steer us away from giving police more excuses to incarcerate on their discretion. But even ignoring that, I don’t think we should support “we knew but could not provide evidence to prove guilt”, the justice system requires evidence for a reason.
This point seems plausible, are there any sources that might prove it?
Also your point about racial discrimination might be a good utilitarian argument for it's better to let those racially discriminated against free alongside some folks who were also upto other crimes... The replies have definitely given me more food for thought.
There is lots of evidence supporting needle exchanges as good for harm reduction. See Scotland, Netherlands, and many other EU countries.
Another one to watch is Oregon, where they did the decriminalization bit, but I think without the shift in funding to social services. Haven’t dug much here. (I think “reduce policing, increase social services” is the most sympathetic interpretation of what the moderate Democrats were thinking when they initially supported the “defund the police” slogan, which is now associated with more radical policies that are toxic to the center.)
There is a risk of “no true Scotsman” in the following point, but this is really an extremely radical policy proposal, at least it looked so until a couple years ago; there aren’t actually good examples end-to-end. So I think we need to employ epistemic humility and do local iterative experiments to prove it out (the advantage of the federal model in the US is a federal decriminalization would result in 50 natural experiments as states passed their own laws.) I don’t want to concede too much uncertainty though, the harms of criminalization are objectively very high, so you’d need to measure very high costs from the proposed new policy which I’m very skeptical that you’d see.
>For the vast majority of drug users that are not addicted, this is obvious.
I'm pretty sure a couple decades of effectively legalized oxycodone and hydrocodone use shows this view is not correct.
I’m here for the FDA regulating what is on the label matching what is in the pill. But there is so an argument for optional certification; it might end up that the steady state cost for FDA compliance leaves room at the bottom end of the market for Mexican underground labs, and I’d rather have US above-ground labs filling that niche (because there are other recourses for egregious behavior like lacing oxy pills with Fentanyl if your supplier is in the US, which are not available against cartel labs in Mexico). It’s an empirical hypothesis though, you might not see prices high enough to matter with FDA compliant labs.
Another temptation to resist is taxing the drugs to pay for social services, “sin tax” in this case would again leave the door open for illegal labs. Again you can tune the parameters when you have evidence from the market.
We can probably keep more existing addicts alive by full legalization, but we pretty much invite a huge wave of new folks who will spend the rest of their lives with an opiate dependency.
For example if you want oxy, it’s very expensive on the black market, and so many end up taking fentanyl instead, which is more dangerous even if you have known purity medical grade, and is extremely dangerous when purchased on the black market with variable and unknown purity.
So in summary, I really strongly disagree that “we effectively did this”. The decriminalization program has not been seriously tried for opiates anywhere outside Portugal (where it didn’t cause an increase in usage, and did result in decreased harm).
That is an excellent argument in favor of legalization, not one against. What you're describing is selective enforcement and prosecution, and the use of it as a tool to arrest and convict someone because they can't be proven to have committed some other crime.
I am absolutely thrilled with this blanket pardon.
Rephrasing the statement slightly, like:
> I am pardoning additional individuals who may continue to experience the unnecessary collateral consequences of a conviction for simple possession of beer, attempted simple possession of beer, or use of beer.
and it sounds utterly obvious, and ludicrous that it ever would have been an issue in the first place. I love a good stout or porter, and I can walk into just about any grocery store, flash my ID, hand over some cash, and walk out with a bottle of drugs that's caused far more societal harm than cannabis ever did. That I can drink a beer in public and no one bats an eye, while my neighbors could smoke a joint in their own house and go to jail for it, is insanity.
Good on you, Mr. President, for making life better for a whole lot of Americans.
It needs to be formally acknowledged as such, and further as fundamentally unconstitutional, but these kinds of victories take time. At least that so-called "War" is destroying fewer lives now.
It goes against the spirit of it but not the word of it.
This worked because it's what the people wanted - in response to the 70s - not because some evil scheming overlord.
"You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
The man said it. I have no doubt.
I was talking about the domestic law enforcement continuing to use the stuff they got for cheap/federally subsidized, or free, because “it’s effective.”
Please tell me more about Congress spending money on equipment the military doesn't need or want isn't corporate welfare for Defense Contractors.
Eisenhower even warned us to such actions in 1961, and literally if there was ever someone who would know: it would be a man that was on both sides as a high-ranking general and President. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
This article is not about giving used equipment to police departments.
> Eisenhower even warned us to such actions in 1961
Yeah, and we did what he said. US military spending as % GDP has gone straight down since ~1985. (Except around 2008 - but that's because our GDP went down.)
Since 1997, the 1033 program has handed $7.4bn worth of surplus equipment from the Department of Defense (DoD) to more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies across America.
Created the EPA
Warmonger but hated by the CIA/FBI
All that was popular as well.
This wasn't some evil mastermind scheme to enrich the military industrial complex.
It was run-of-the-mill everyday politics.
The world isn't fair.
That doesn't mean we're all being fooled by some evil genius mastermind pulling the strings we can't see.
It just means that people don't care about what's right or wrong, mostly - just what they want.
If it was truly about marijuana use, then when usage rates for white and black Americans are effectively the same, black people would not be 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.
While on its face true, this isn’t taking into account things like recidivism or multiple charges.
That’s to say the average black person has more priors and is more likely to have multiple charges when charged compared to the average white.
I have no idea what you mean about multiple charges.
Arrests don’t occur in a vacuum. The prior convictions are known and are a factor.
> I have no idea what you mean about multiple charges.
Person A is smoking pot and is arrested. Person B is smoking pot wearing a bloody t shirt with a knife in his hand. If you’re more likely to engage in criminal activity, you’re more likely to be smoking pot while engaging in criminal activity (again, on average).
I think a slightly simpler way of putting your point is that Black people are more likely to be serious criminals than white people. Am I missing some nuance?
Dog whistles about unknowns like previous convictions or criminal history, and fictitious scenarios attempting to justify your point, don't actually help you the way you think they do.
If you're ignorant enough to think there isn't a disproportionately racist response in the WoD and the application of anti-cannabis laws on the citizenry, you need to open your eyes.
Attempting to claim "the prior convictions are known and are a factor" without admitting the disproportionate affect race has on such convictions being sought in the first place, is ignorant.
"Arrests don't occur in a vacuum." - If you deliberately and willfully ignore the existence of racism in the policing and justice systems, then you're not considering all the factors - and are being misinformed at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.
For example, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67214409 - a world championship medallist and Olympian sprinter were arrested on entirely fictitious charges of having suspected drugs and weapons - with no basis, and with no evidence of such items being found.
If you can't see how the factor of race fits into the application of these laws against certain citizens more, that's your failure - it's nothing new.
The point is that they can't jump to racist dog-whistles and then pretend like race isn't a factor in targeting to begin with.
All the stats we have focus around arrests, charges, convictions, so any systemic racism in enforcement is included.
African Americans being arrested more per capita for a crime is not inherently the same as committing more crime per capita.
I have a hard time figuring how you could ever prove your claim, because how do you show who committed crimes that were either not suspects, or crimes that weren’t discovered or reported?
There's no need to add in the practically unprovable presence of deliberate targeting when other explanations sufficiently account for disparities.
It is hard to expect a republic to make sensible decisions when it's citizens are being actively misinformed. It is also hard to not impute malice on people who push blatantly false information.
It does make one wonder why, given the history of known deception, many people have recently seemed to abandon all critical thought and fervently believe whatever the government tells them.
or claim to have missed.
You can't deny that the WoD and cannabis prosecutions in particular have disproportionately targeted African Americans and other minorities.
I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy. Afterward, individual mandatory punishment/rehab for those who abuse drugs/alcohol and harm themselves and others should be the norm.
That begs the question by assuming that's a good measurement. Is it? Since prohibition ended, has alcohol become so uniquely destructive here (compared to all other alcohol-allowing societies) that we've wanted to ban it again? I'm of the strong opinion that it's not.
> I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy.
Add that to the long list of things I agree with in principle, but reject in practice. Our timeline of such experiments is a series of social disasters.
In any case, I think there a clearly distinct categories of drugs. I don't want to live around meth users, because drug itself makes them paranoid, irritable, and hard to be near. I couldn't care less if my next door neighbor smokes weed.
OK, but we passed a constitutional amendment saying the opposite, and the so-called "War on Drugs" operates in defiance of the spirit of that amendment.
Which amendment is that? The 21st repealing prohibition did not make any value statements on whether prohibition was ever good policy, it merely repeals the amendment banning alcohol.
> and the so-called "War on Drugs" operates in defiance of the spirit of that amendment.
There is no "spirit of [the] amendment". It repealed a ban on alcohol. Alcohol was undeniably an extreme social ill before prohibition.
California legalized weed, people who wanted to use it started admitting that they use it, and... that's about it. Nothing bad happened. If anything, I know people who switched from alcohol to weed in the spirit of harm reduction, and they seem to be better for it.
Yes, I think this indisputably so. However, the more widely cannabis is used the greater the harms seem to be.
For instance[1]:
“According to the 2022 Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 29.5 million people ages 12 and older (10.5% in this age group) had AUD in the past year.”
Compare that to[2]:
“The incidence rate of cannabis-induced psychosis increased steadily from 2.8 per 100 000 person years in 2006 to 6.1 per 100 000 person years in 2016.”
You’re orders of magnitude more likely to suffer harm from using alcohol than cannabis. I’m saying that as someone who enjoys the occasional drink but doesn’t use weed; I don’t have skin in the game.
[1] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...
I'm curious as to where the break-even is. e.g. one joint per day is as harmful as 2.5 beers per day.
The law could say "nobody shall wear a red tshirt", and I think it would then be morally okay to arrest and punish anyone who continues to wear red tshirts.
Anyone not okay with the red tshirt law can go get the law changed through the usual democratic process. But if they just ignore the law and wear a red tshirt anyway, then punish them.
If alcohol was not already widely (ab)used in a county would they be wrong to prohibit it?
(Note not meant in any form of malice, intended as probing questions for discussion)
There's a subtle but important distinction between
> Alcohol is allowed, so cannabis should be allowed.
and
> Alcohol is not illegal, so cannabis should not be illegal.
Our legal system is a default-allow denylist: unless a law says you can't do something, you can. The government doesn't grant permission. It removes it.
So because the government hasn't made the case that we should ban alcohol, I think it's on them to prove that cannabis is somehow worse to justify its banning.
Those convicted of "possession or use" are nearly 100% plea down cases when the actual offense was sales, distribution, or manufacturing.
This pardon is a good thing, why are we discussing it like it's not a move in the right direction?
Not true at all - guess what charge you catch if you are caught smoking on a chairlift at a ski resort on Federal land or if you're on a hike in a National park.
Thousands of people every year;
https://www.nydailynews.com/2013/09/16/marijuana-busts-on-fe...
A neighbor of mine would smoke weed constantly.
A young woman would come to his apartment every month or so. He would open the door, invite her in, and she would refuse. They would talk at the door for about five minutes while marijuana smoke drifted into the hall. Then she’d leave.
One day I asked she was his daughter, she said laughed and said, “No, I’m his parole officer!”
So it’s pretty legal for indoors purposes.
But - it’s not de facto legal in public. This is a big issue in public parks. Nobody wants their kids to share a park with potheads.
Same applies for alcohol and tobacco.
I’m fine with legalizing pot under the same conditions as alcohol - in your residence, buying from authorized dealers, high taxes, review boards, etc.
But just look at the high number of alcohol related crimes. Not just drunk driving, but public intoxication too.
Don’t expect legality pot to make the illegal uses go away. People will stop buy from illegal dealers, which will continue to be prosecuted (they don’t pay taxes).
It won’t do much good or harm.
I see this as no different than alcohol or tobacco (which you also called out)
Growing up and not having a place to smoke, we'd always go to a park. But we'd go deep into the woods, etc. last thing we wanted to do was inconvenience someone else, leading to us getting caught.
Same is true of when we drank booze. No need to do it in front of a family.
The police give warnings, then only after a thousand warning give tickets.
But at the end of the day, these parks are not usable because of “partying.”
When I had kids I took pride in living in a lower income neighborhood. I didn’t want to be part of “white flight.”
But park problem went from being a nuisance to a big problem when COVID hit. Parks were one of the only places kids could go.
Now the kids are older I’m looking forward to leaving the soulless suburbs where all houses look the same.
But public drinking and drug use made the public spaces in lower income neighborhoods unusable.
Legalizing pot won’t help or hurt at all. But some people with convictions for possession deserve to have a light and temporary black mark on their record.
You wouldn't argue that a mathematical proof is more than 2 pages long and therefore doesn't count, right?
I find higher truth value in short, simple statements like "I'm innocent as shown on the cameras" than I do when Alan Dershowitz gets on the evening news to wax poetic/philosophical about what the notion of "guilty" really means.
the law is inherently always complicated, because it, by definition, must provide general and categorical solutions to a wide range of particular instances.
The argument I've heard is that many with simple possession on their record may have actually pleaded down from a different crime, and that needs to be taken into consideration.
How is this related to nationality or residence?
If they want to ban drugs in general, then they should prosecute those supplying it and those producing it for sale. Not private individuals consuming it in their own homes, and causing absolutely no harm to anyone. And those who are consuming it in public while presenting a danger to others, that can be made illegal. Failing that, they can outright ban public consumption.
Considering that there is -at least- a correlation between substance abuse and domestic abuse [1,2]. I wouldn't be so sure to say "absolutely no harm" in this case.
[1] https://www.gov1.com/public-health/articles/the-link-between...
Merge, or some more over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38736184
I am not sure that this is as black and white as some people make it out to be. Complete freedom to do whatever one pleases is not Utopia. There is a limit if one wants a functioning society that is on the whole safe and high trust.
> There is a limit if one wants a functioning society that is on the whole safe and high trust.
We all have different thresholds on where that limit lies. In the film Demolition Man, Dr. Raymond Cocteau's vision of a safe San Angeles did not allow sports, swearing, eating meat, or consuming sugar or caffeine because they are "bad" for you.
Nothing in the text of the pardon does that is "singling out" veterans.
It doesn't pardon UCMJ violations, but it absolutely includes military veterans with federal civilian convictions (unless they were in unsatisfactory immigration status at the time of the offense.)
Not including military offenses is a different thing than singling out veterans.
EDIT: And no, Parker v. Levy is not a valid justification for this, as the conduct was equally criminalized in both the military and the civilian world. Furthermore, Parker v. Levy and related cases are only relevant on what is lawful to make different in the military justice system, not what is good policy. Nobody is saying the President cannot exercise the pardon power in a way that discriminates against military members; the pardon power is plenary. I am saying he shouldn't.
There's a fairly consistent throughline in the theory of the law (that gets to the reason there even is a UCMJ in the first place) that military discipline is categorically distinct from civilian criminal law, and under that theory possession of marijuana contrary to military regulations is meaningfully distinct from simple possession in the civilian context.
Its also, to be fair, pretty clear that, clear and crisp as the theory may be, in practice that's more of a statistical difference in significance than a categorical one. But even a statistical difference can, arguably, justify the normal case-by-case approach to clemency rather than a blanket approach.
My guess is also the UCMJ is like a separate court system out side of the usual court system. Since military are held. to a 'higher moral standard' and such. Even if it were made legal for citizens, it may not mean military rules are amended to allow use. An example could be Spice. While you could buy spice at a head shop and smoke it, not illegal, the military deemed it against the rules and you could get kicked out for smoking spice.
There's potentially some question as to whether the President has the power to pardon the conviction and impose an OTH, because an OTH implicates a liberty interest and requires a hearing unless waived. See, e.g., Vierrether v. United States, 27 Fed. Cl. 357, 364 (1992), aff'd without op., 6 F.3d 786 (Fed. Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1030 (1994).
However, I'd be hard pressed to find any objection to unilaterally imposing an administrative discharge with a General (Under Honorable Conditions) characterization. Alternatively, there is nothing preventing the President from making the pardon conditional.
[1]https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/rebuilding-ozone...
This has always seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to me. Effectively a life sentence for misdemeanor crimes. This is a good first step, but it does not go far enough.
They should just legalize marijuana federally, that would be real change with tangible consequences.
This is shallow campaigning for reelection, in lieu of actual legalization.
Oh please. "Fix everything" in this context would be legalizing all drugs federally.
This fixes nothing except perhaps shifting some public perception in the minds of voters that don't look past the headlines.
> ... I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., do hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who ...
> ... This pardon does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense.
In the first of the above, it specifically states that it applies to citizens and lawful permanent residents. In the second, it says it does not apply to people who didn't have valid immigration status.
So, what happens to someone who had a valid immigration status, but was not a lawful permanent resident? For example, someone on a student or a tourist visa?
Can anyone with legal expertise shed some light on how such things are usually resolved? My naive expectation would be that it still would only apply to citizens and lawful permanent residents. But then, why specifically call out that it doesn't apply to this specific group out of many other groups that aren't covered under "citizens or lawful permanent residents"?
I brought my wife over on the 90 day fiancee visa well before there was a TV show about it, and mostly because it was the only way we could hang out. Thankfully we lucked out, and celebrated our 20th anniversary earlier this year.
But to the point: When you're dealing with DHS and immigration, it's made absolutely clear that if you screw anything up, you're kicked out of the country and it's going to be a ballache to get back in. It's not surprising that they were not included in the blanket pardon, and I think that's actually pretty reasonable, even though I also think that incarceration over marijuana possession is absurd and has been pretty devastating to the lives of millions of people and the communities they live in.
The amount of work you have to do to qualify for a visa, and to move between the different statuses (there are fun periods where your status is just... pending. When we went through this, there was nothing you have to show for this except for a generic looking letter from DHS. All your fancy documentation is sitting in a US Gov't inbox somewhere while they make sure you're not a terrorist) and, frankly, if you manage to get arrested for smoking weed while you're on a visa, you're kind of an idiot.
We didn't even travel outside the country until my wife got her full-fledged citizenship. And when she applied for that, they gave her a hard time over the speeding tickets she'd gotten while here.
Whether you agree with the concept or not, visitors to the country are told pretty clearly that the rules apply extra hard to them, and the consequences of not following very basic rules are going to be extra inconvenient. You get caught breaking the law, you risk losing your visa status and losing the ability to ever visit the country again.
> So, what happens to someone who had a valid immigration status, but was not a lawful permanent resident?
If they are a currently a citizen or lawful permanent resident (the first piece you quote is about the status you have to have to receive the pardon now) and they were a citizen or a lawfully-present non-citizen at the time of the offense (the second part is explicitly about status at the time of offense) they are pardoned.
If they are not a citizen or lawful permanent resident now (even if they are in legal status now and at the time of the offense), no pardon.
If they were a non-citizen that was not legally present at the time of the offense, but are a citizen or lawful permanent resident now (because of the interaction between immigration and law enforcement, that's difficult but not entirely impossible), also no pardon.
You have to both have been in the right status at the time of the offense and the narrower right status at the time of the pardon to qualify.
I do think our current president is a swine of a human being who cares nothing for others but his immediate family. Evidence for this is that he himself is largely responsible for our draconian drug laws when it suited him politically, and now as his progressive wing is deserting him (for excellent reasons) he's politically motivated to do the right thing in view of an election he'd in a pickle to win.
I don't mind people voting rights restored with good reason. I do mind people who use others as a means to an end.
I was locked up with a guy who spent his whole life from 17 to early 50s (and went blind as a result of medical neglect of his diabetes during) for "conspiracy to distribute" Marijuana, even though he never had any in his possession.
Don't fall for this idiocy. Biden is one of the biggest reasons for systemic racism in law enforcement.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...
i know it's relatively few people compared to the number of people with state charges, but the reporting on this says it's thousands of people. which, in absolute terms, is a lot of people.
The scope of the president's pardon power is breathtaking.
([T]he power [of clemency] flows from the Constitution alone, not from any legislative enactments, and . . . it cannot be modified, abridged, or diminished by the Congress.). -- -20Garland, 71 U.S. at 380; see also Schick v. Reed, 419 U.S. 256, 266 (1974)
Add on top of that the insider allegations of Trump selling pardons for 2 million $ apiece [1], and the list of ... sometimes really questionable pardons that were issued [2], and it becomes a real issue of national security.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/giuliani-accu...
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/trump-pardons-co...
Speaking of which, his pardon only pardons those who have violated federal or DC laws, not state laws.