More than a dozen lawmakers have sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to take additional steps on cannabis decriminalization before his term expires in mid-January.
The letter — which was endorsed by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), and others — lauded the administration’s work to transfer cannabis from the Schedule I series of drugs to Schedule III, but added that the transition should be finalized before January 20.
Moving cannabis to Schedule III means that the government will recognize the drug’s accepted medical uses, whereas, at its current place on Schedule I, the drug is defined as having no medical benefits. The Biden administration announced the beginning of the transition in the fall of 2023.
The letter noted that the transition would not address the gap between federal and state cannabis policy, and that more action was needed to resolve the harms of criminalization.
“Possession and use of recreational marijuana — and much state-legal medical marijuana — will continue to be a violation of federal law,” the letter stated.
The president issued pardons in 2022 and 2023 for people convicted of low-level marijuana-related crimes. However, those pardons were limited in scope, and thousands of people remain in federal prisons due to cannabis-based convictions.
“The Biden Administration has the opportunity to further reduce the harms of marijuana’s criminalization before the end of this Administration by issuing another round of clemency and an updated memorandum on prosecutorial discretion for marijuana offenses,” the letter-writers said.
“Rescheduling marijuana and the prior round of pardons must not be the end of this Administration’s historic work to use its executive authority to undo the damage of federal marijuana policy,” they added, noting that the Biden White House still has the opportunity to issue “an updated memorandum on prosecutorial discretion for marijuana offenses” for federal prosecutors in the future, barring a repeal of such a policy by president-elect Donald Trump.
The letter also urged Biden to once again encourage “state governors to expand marijuana clemency and decriminalize low-level marijuana conduct under state law.”
Importantly, some of the actions the administration is being urged to take or finalize would still allow marijuana use or possession crimes to exist at the federal level. When Biden initially announced his administration was making moves to reschedule the drug, advocates had hoped for a complete descheduling of cannabis, a move that would have effectively made it legal for both medical and recreational use at the federal level.
“The goal of federal cannabis policy reform ought to be to address the existing, untenable chasm between federal marijuana policy and the cannabis laws of the majority of U.S. states,” Paul Armentano, deputy director of marijuana advocacy organization NORML, said last year in response to news about plans to move cannabis to Schedule III. “Rescheduling the cannabis plant to Schedule III of the US Controlled Substances Act fails to adequately address this conflict.”
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