Biden Pardons Marijuana Possession
President Biden on Thursday pardoned all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. It's widely seen as a first step toward decriminalization of marijuana. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 6 Oct 2022.
"Wow, this must affect a lot of people," I thought at first. I've been hearing from marijuana legalization advocates for decades that some 90% of all people in federal prison are there on nonviolent drug convictions. So I skimmed through news articles such as the one linked above to find how many people would be freed, and it's... zero. "Officials said there are currently no Americans serving prison time solely on federal simple marijuana possession charges," the article reports. The government estimates, though, that there are 6,500 people convicted of such crimes in the past.
So where are all these nonviolent simple drug possession offenders, this supposed 90% of all convicts, being imprisoned? They're not in state prisons. Ten years ago I asked a brother-in-law of mine who's a state prosecutor about the 90% statistic. He just laughed. "If that were true, given the short sentences that crime carries, marijuana possession would be 98% of my office's cases. It's more like zero. Maybe that 90% is the feds."
Well, the numbers from drug legalization advocates are clearly hokum. (Is anyone really surprised?) But that doesn't mean Biden's pardon is wrong. I'm in favor of correcting government drug policy to be rational and evidence based. Marijuana was miscategorized by the federal government decades ago, contrary to available facts and for openly racist reasons. Biden is working on changing that, too. He says he will instruct the HHS and Attorney General to review the facts and set new policy as appropriate. We'll see how long that takes.
"Wow, this must affect a lot of people," I thought at first. I've been hearing from marijuana legalization advocates for decades that some 90% of all people in federal prison are there on nonviolent drug convictions. So I skimmed through news articles such as the one linked above to find how many people would be freed, and it's... zero. "Officials said there are currently no Americans serving prison time solely on federal simple marijuana possession charges," the article reports. The government estimates, though, that there are 6,500 people convicted of such crimes in the past.
So where are all these nonviolent simple drug possession offenders, this supposed 90% of all convicts, being imprisoned? They're not in state prisons. Ten years ago I asked a brother-in-law of mine who's a state prosecutor about the 90% statistic. He just laughed. "If that were true, given the short sentences that crime carries, marijuana possession would be 98% of my office's cases. It's more like zero. Maybe that 90% is the feds."
Well, the numbers from drug legalization advocates are clearly hokum. (Is anyone really surprised?) But that doesn't mean Biden's pardon is wrong. I'm in favor of correcting government drug policy to be rational and evidence based. Marijuana was miscategorized by the federal government decades ago, contrary to available facts and for openly racist reasons. Biden is working on changing that, too. He says he will instruct the HHS and Attorney General to review the facts and set new policy as appropriate. We'll see how long that takes.