President Biden Is Not Filling His Campaign Promises When It Comes To Cannabis

In a country where most states have weed legalized in some form, the government still isn’t budging on removing the plant from its list of controlled substances or even decriminalizing it. 

But what’s even more irritating is how President Biden’s campaign in 2020 had marijuana decriminalization and the expungement of related criminal records as a priority. Although it’s still illegal at a federal level, lawmakers in most states have introduced bills to legalize recreational or medical marijuana (or both) and even proposed social equity programs to make the industry more opportune for minority communities. 

Some influential political figures have made it known that changing marijuana laws is a must, including former Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

On the other hand, Rep. Dave Joyce is a republican in Ohio who has long worked to fight for the expungement of criminal records for nonviolet cannabis crimes and urged his state to decriminalize the plant. “If someone like myself and a progressive like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can find some common ground, it begs the question, why hasn’t the president acted?” reports Wall Street Journal. 

According to a 2021 Gallup Poll regarding Americans and their stance on cannabis legalization, more than two in three individuals favor the motion. Similarly, the same poll found that Democratic support for loosening marijuana laws is much higher than Republican support. 

Without almost equal support from both parties, the move to relax marijuana laws isn’t in the foreseeable future. But some think that at a time when criminal activity and crime are on the upswing, it might look like another campaign move if President Biden were to start discussing decriminalization. 

Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, John Hudak, studies marijuana policy and says he can “definitely see the Biden administration looking at rising crime rates and think it would be a messaging mistake to begin to talk about the decriminalization of cannabis, about pardons and record expungement.”

When President Biden was a senator in the 80s and 90s, he was actually one of the core law writers that enforced penalizing individuals for possession of controlled substances with prison sentences. 

But isn’t it funny how during his 2020 campaign, that past sort of disappeared, and he was able to win over Democrats with promises to decriminalize weed and expunge criminal records? We’ll just have to wait and see what he brings to the table this midterm election.