Biden Highlights Marijuana Pardons At Black History Month Event
Biden Highlights Marijuana Pardons At Black History Month Event
MJ moment
Speaking at an event commemorating the end of Black History Month on Monday, President Joe Biden again touted his move to pardon people for marijuana—highlighting the racially disparate impact of cannabis enforcement. “Another thing about equal justice. I’m keeping my promise: No one should be in prison for the mere possession of marijuana,” the president said. “Too many minorities are in prison for that.” “So, what I’ve passed—we should pardon them, expunge their records as if it never happened so they have a chance again in society,” he said.
Separately, the White House highlighted the cannabis policy actions took last year—including the pardons proclamation as well as the review into marijuana’s federal scheduling status that he directed—in a new fact sheet on the administration’s moves to advance “equity and opportunity for Black Americans and communities across the country.” “The President took bold action to address our failed approach to marijuana. The criminalization of marijuana possession has upended too many lives—for conduct that is now legal in many states,” it says. “While white, Black, and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people are disproportionately arrested, prosecuted and convicted for it. His pardon action “lifts barriers to housing, employment, and educational opportunities for thousands of people with those prior convictions,” the fact sheet says, nothing that the president also called on governors to follow suit at the state level. While Biden’s mass pardon covers people who have committed non-violent federal cannabis possession offenses at the federal level and under Washington, D.C. law, it did not free anyone who is currently incarcerated and excludes people who were convicted of selling cannabis, among other groups that advocates would like to see get relief. And despite the president seemingly conflating pardons and expungements in his recent and prior remarks,…
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