After Biden’s Pardon announcement last week, VP Kamala Harris breaks her silence and speaks to a cheering crowd Saturday and says “speaking of the system of justice, we are also changing—y’all might have heard that this week—the federal government’s approach to marijuana.”
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The Vice President was speaking at a Texas Democratic Party event in Austin Saturday with a call for Texas Democrats to turn out to the polls next month. She continued, “Because the bottom line there is: Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”
Biden’s pardon proclamation shocked many last Thursday but many questioned why certain offenses were left out like Conspiracy, distribution and possession with intent to distribute and other charges involving federal marijuana sentences.
According to CNBC, “The relatively small number of people who were actually pardoned Thursday obscures the massive role that marijuana plays in the American criminal justice system.
Every year, arrests for marijuana possession typically account for between 40% and 50% of all drug arrests nationwide.
According to research compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union, between 2010 and 2018, there were 6.1 million arrests in the United States for marijuana possession. In 2018 alone, police made more arrests for marijuana “than for all violent crimes combined.”
The ACLU data also shows that these arrests disproportionately impacted people of color and low-income communities, serving to deepen existing structural inequalities.”
ICYMI, Biden pardoned those convicted of marijuana possession under federal law yesterday, the most extensive White House action on U.S. drug policy to date.
“Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana,” he said. pic.twitter.com/gX3WLYlqau
— POLITICO (@politico) October 7, 2022
VP Harris had been silent on marijuana since she and Biden heavily campaigned on decriminalizing marijuana, freeing pot prisoners and expunging their records.
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According to Politifact, “There’s some context missing in this claim, and it’s framed in a misleading way. We couldn’t independently verify the 1,500 figure, which is cited in a February article by the Free Beacon, a conservative online news website. It says “at least 1,560 people were sent to state prisons for marijuana-related offenses between 2011 and 2016,” when Harris was California attorney general. It says the data comes from reports from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. We requested that data from the state prisons agency.
The agency’s data shows there were 1,883 admissions to state prison on marijuana offenses during the years Harris was attorney general. There were another 92 admissions for crimes related to hashish, a drug made from cannabis resin. Notably, the figures dropped dramatically during Harris’ tenure, from 817 marijuana-related admissions in her first year in office to 137 in her last.
SOURCE: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
For context, marijuana sales and possession remained illegal under state law during Harris’ time as attorney general. California voters legalized recreational pot in 2016, the same year Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate and left her AG post.“
U.S. Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said in Tampa Friday that he intends for his agency to move “as quickly as we can” to comply with President Joe Biden’s directive to review the decades-old policy of listing marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug.
“I think you’re going to find that we’re going to move as quickly as we can but, at the end of the day science is going to take us to a solution,” Becerra told reporters.
