President Joe Biden announced sweeping federal cannabis policy reform Thursday afternoon that includes pardoning thousands of federal cannabis offenses.

The three-step plan aims to:

• Pardon all federal offenses of the simple possession of cannabis;
• Urge all state governors to pardon state-level offenses of simple cannabis possession; and
• Ask Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to initiate an administrative process to review how cannabis is scheduled under federal law.

“As I often said during my campaign for President, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden said in a public statement. “Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

While cannabis policy was hardly a focal point in the 2020 election cycle with the COVID-19 pandemic taking up much of the spotlight, Biden indicated that he was receptive to decriminalization and even medical cannabis legalization on the campaign trail, as Cannabis Business Times previously reported.

This latest announcement, which arrives just a month before the midterm elections, follows Biden’s statements in April that he would grant clemency to 78 individuals serving time for non-violent drug offenses.

That move, coupled with Biden’s historic announcement Thursday—while a long time coming—are major steps in the right direction for federal cannabis policy reform, and we can only hope the momentum keeps building and putting pressure on federal and state officials to end the war on drugs.

-Melissa Schiller, Senior Digital Editor

The underlying message behind President Biden’s Oct. 6 announcement that the White House will support major policy shifts on cannabis reform moving forward is the notion that it was wrong to criminalize and jail people simply for using or possessing a plant in the first place.

Many of the thousands of individuals with prior cannabis-related offenses received sentences based on the bipartisan Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden co-crafted and co-sponsored. The legislation authorized new funding for drug treatment programs and stricter penalties for drug offenses.

Now, with President Biden offering pardons to offenders of federal cannabis possession laws, many of his opponents are questioning the timing of his actions—claiming it’s an attempt to buy votes in a political gain ahead of the midterm elections.

Politically driven or not, undoing some of the harms of an unjust prohibition was the right move to make.

-Tony Lange, Associate Editor