President Joe Biden ceremonially pardoned a pair of turkeys on Friday ahead of next week\u2019s Thanksgiving holiday. But asked whether he\u2019d also extend clemency to people incarcerated in federal prison over marijuana offenses, the administration didn\u2019t have much to say.<\/p>\n
During a press briefing on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressed on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre any humans going to be pardoned by President Biden? There are people who are serving life in prison for marijuana and want him to honor his commitment to release everyone in prison for pot,\u201d New York Post\u2019s Steven Nelson said. \u201cAre people going to get pardoned as well by President Biden?\u201d<\/p>\n
Psaki replied that she has \u201cnothing new to update you on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the president is, of course\u2014will look into the use of his clemency powers,\u201d she added. \u201cHe\u2019s talked about his approach, or his view, on non-violent drug offenders, but I don\u2019t have anything to update you on on that today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIt was a different tone than when the press secretary responded to a separate question about the Thanksgiving turkeys. When another reporter asked where the birds will go after they\u2019re ceremonially pardoned, she said it was \u201can important question,\u201d noting that the birds stayed in a hotel prior to Friday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
All told, it\u2019s an exchange that speaks to the frustration of many advocates who have grown impatient with the president, who has served ten months in the Oval Office without having exercised his executive authority to fulfill his cannabis campaign pledge<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day that goes by without pardon action, President Biden is breaking the promise he made to Senator Cory Booker and the American public in his campaign for the presidency,\u201d Justin Strekal, political director of NORML, told Marijuana Moment. \u201cHe should pardon people, not just birds.\u201d<\/p>\n While Biden\u2019s opposition to adult-use marijuana legalization is well known, activists have been holding out hope that he would at least move ahead with a clemency effort for those who continue to serve time in federal prison over cannabis.<\/p>\n The non-comment from the White House comes about a week after a group of senators sent a letter urging President Joe Biden to use his executive authority<\/a> to grant a mass pardon for people with non-violent marijuana convictions.<\/p>\n Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who led that letter, said during a new interview that Biden could boost the economy and promote racial equity with the \u201cstroke of a pen\u201d by granting the relief<\/a>.<\/p>\n A recently published Congressional Research Service (CRS) report affirmed that the president has it within his power to\u00a0grant mass pardons for cannabis offenses<\/a>. It also said that the administration can move to federally legalize cannabis without waiting for lawmakers to act.<\/p>\n Relatedly, a\u00a0group of more than 150 celebrities, athletes, politicians, law enforcement professionals and academics\u00a0signed a letter that was delivered to Biden<\/a>\u00a0in September, urging him to issue a \u201cfull, complete and unconditional pardon\u201d to all people with non-violent federal marijuana convictions.<\/p>\n That letter came just as the administration started encouraging about\u00a01,000 people who were temporarily placed on home confinement for federal drug offenses<\/a>\u00a0to fill out clemency application forms.<\/p>\n Early in his administration, Biden received a letter from 37 members of Congress that\u00a0called on him to use executive authority<\/a>\u00a0to mass pardon all people with non-violent federal marijuana convictions.<\/p>\n The ask for this unique form of presidential clemency is modeled on actions taken by Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in the 1970s to categorically forgive Americans who avoided the draft for the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n At the same time that this trio of senators is pushing for a blanket pardon, lawmakers in both chambers are hoping to advance comprehensive legislation to end prohibition.<\/p>\n The House Judiciary Committee in September\u00a0approved a bill to federally legalize marijuana<\/a>, and Senate leadership is in the process of\u00a0finalizing their own reform proposal<\/a>. Meanwhile, several Republican members of Congress introduced a bill on Monday to\u00a0federally legalize and tax marijuana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Warren and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) separately\u00a0sent a letter to the attorney general last month<\/a>, making the case that the Justice Department should initiate a marijuana descheduling process in order to \u201callow states to regulate cannabis as they see fit, begin to remedy the harm caused by decades of racial disparities in enforcement of cannabis laws, and facilitate valuable medical research.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House said in August that the president was looking into using his executive authority<\/a> to grant clemency to people with certain non-violent drug convictions. But apparently there\u2019s nothing new to report to that end as of Friday.<\/p>\n Instead, Biden reserved his clemency power for the turkeys.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the power vested in me as president of the United States, I pardon you,\u201d he told the birds. \u201cI pardon you this Thanksgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden has faced criticism from drug policy reform advocates who\u2019ve grown frustrated that he\u2019s yet to make good on campaign promises such as decriminalizing marijuana possession. The president also campaigned on expunging prior cannabis records and respecting the rights of states to set their own laws.<\/p>\n Since taking office, however, his administration has made little progress on any of those pledges and has instead fired its own White House staffers over marijuana<\/a>\u00a0and sought to extend a budget provision that has\u00a0blocked Washington, D.C. from legalizing cannabis sales<\/a>.<\/p>\n In April, Psaki was pressed on Biden\u2019s clemency promise for people with federal marijuana and said that process\u00a0will start with modestly rescheduling cannabis<\/a>\u2014a proposal that advocates say wouldn\u2019t actually accomplish what she\u2019s suggesting.<\/p>\n Moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act, as Biden is proposing, wouldn\u2019t facilitate mass clemency given that being convicted for crimes related to drugs in that slightly lower category\u2014which currently includes cocaine\u2014also carries significant penalties.<\/p>\n Marijuana Activists Push Governors To Request Federal Protections For Interstate Commerce<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo courtesy of YouTube\/White House.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Biden Pardons Turkeys, But White House Has \u2018Nothing New\u2019 On Relief For Marijuana Prisoners<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden ceremonially pardoned a pair of turkeys on Friday ahead of next week\u2019s Thanksgiving holiday. But asked whether he\u2019d also extend clemency to people incarcerated in federal prison over marijuana offenses, the administration didn\u2019t have much to say. During a press briefing on Friday, White House Press SecretaryContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51256,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51255\/revisions\/51256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Biden Pardons Turkeys, But White House Has \u2018Nothing New\u2019 On Relief For Marijuana Prisoners<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"