Presidential Pot Pardons

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday President Joe Biden moved decisively to drag the federal government into the 21st century by announcing that he intends to pardon everyone who has been convicted of simple marijuana possession by the federal government and by the District of Columbia.    Biden's bold move will expunge convictions from the records of around 6,500 individuals, thus removing barriers to employment and even voting in some states.

The President does not have the power to change the actual law - The Controlled Substances Act - which delineates which drugs are illegal in this country and classifies them according to a hierarchical "schedule."    But the administration can change marijuana's status within the law through a formal rule-making process with the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.  Biden said that he is directing those two departments to begin the process of "rescheduling" or downgrading the US legal classification of marijuana.  "Pot" or "weed," as it is often referred to in the vernacular, is currently classified as a "Schedule 1" drug of the Controlled Substances Act, putting it on a legal par with heroin and LSD - and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine, which are the leaders of the US overdose epidemic.

Removing  marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act would take legislation by Congress.  The House has passed bills in the last two sessions of Congress that would do just that, but the Senate has yet to act on the measure.  Legislation to legalize marijuana would take sixty votes in the Senate, and many Republicans and even a few Democrats currently oppose doing that.

But yesterday the nation witnessed significant progress toward the eventual full legalization of marijuana. Pardons are being issued and federal convictions for possession are being expunged - and the federal government is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug than it was previously considered to be.

Another social barrier is crumbling.