President Joe Biden granted a half dozen pardons on Friday, including for a handful of people with marijuana or other drug convictions on their records.<\/p>\n
The end-of-year clemency action follows the mass pardon for Americans who\u2019ve committed federal cannabis possession offenses that the president issued in October.<\/p>\n
Advocates would welcome any form of presidential relief\u2014and celebrate the formal forgiveness for a few people who were previously convicted of offenses like unknowingly renting housing space to a person growing marijuana, as the White House said was the case for now-pardoned John Dix Nock III.<\/p>\n
But at the same time, the president continues to face pressure to make good on his campaign pledge to free all currently incarcerated people serving time for federal marijuana crimes. And this latest batch of pardons did not include any of the people still behind bars over the plant.<\/p>\n
Beside 72-year-old Nock, the president also pardoned 50-year-old Edward Lincoln De Coito III, an Army veteran who was convicted in a marijuana trafficking case in his early 20s. Gary Parks Davis also received<\/a> a pardon for a decades-old cocaine conviction.<\/p>\n Our Administration believes in a criminal justice system that allows for second chances. <\/p>\n Today, @POTUS<\/a> granted six full pardons. These include individuals who honorably served in the U.S. military, volunteer in the community, and overcame domestic abuse. https:\/\/t.co\/Bqo46Ngnum<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 30, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cThis set of pardons includes individuals who honorably served in the U.S. military, volunteer in their communities, and survived domestic abuse,\u201d White House Assistant Press Secretary Abdullah Hasan said. \u201cIt also joins the categorical pardon of thousands convicted of simple marijuana possession [Biden] announced earlier this year.\u201d<\/p>\n This set of pardons includes individuals who honorably served in the U.S. military, volunteer in their communities, and survived domestic abuse. <\/p>\n It also joins the categorical pardon of thousands convicted of simple marijuana possession @POTUS<\/a> announced earlier this year.<\/p>\n \u2014 Abdullah Hasan (@AHasan46) December 30, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Biden has received ample applause for his earlier marijuana pardon, which affected about 6,500 Americans with fedreral possession offenses, in addition to people convicted for the offense in Washington, D.C., according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission<\/a>. But advocates and lawmakers have encouraged him to go further, even if he\u2019s unwilling to back federal cannabis legalization.<\/p>\n Weldon Angelos\u2014who received a presidential pardon under the Trump administration for a marijuana-related conviction and has since become an active member of the criminal justice reform community, working with multiple administrations\u2014told Marijuana Moment on Friday that Biden\u2019s latest action is \u201ca very disappointing pardon grant.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed out that several recipients are in older age, making the clemency gesture more symbolic than practical as thousands continue to sit in federal prison over marijuana.<\/p>\n \u201cI was deeply disappointed that President Biden has done this and has not honored his campaign promise to grant mass clemency to people that are needlessly suffering in prison for a cannabis conviction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cPardons are definitely nice\u2014especially for people that need the pardon. If you\u2019re a young person that can\u2019t get a job or an apartment or a loan, yeah, pardons are very good. We need those,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there are people that are literally sitting in prison, most of whom would not even be charged today because of the changes to state and federal law and policy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to focus on the people that are sitting in prison. And I hope that Biden will continue to grant more\u2014I\u2019m hopeful that we\u2019re going to see a lot more. It\u2019s just disappointing that he hasn\u2019t done that much to this date,\u201d Angelos said, adding that he received multiple calls on Friday from currently incarcerated people who were hoping to receive clemency over the holiday season.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Biden and top administration officials have been touting his October pardons for the past several weeks.<\/p>\n On Thursday, for example, Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice said that the president\u2019s cannabis clemency and directive for an administrative review into cannabis scheduling have helped address the country\u2019s \u201cfailed approach to marijuana\u201d<\/a> and represent key parts of the administration\u2019s \u201cremarkably productive year.\u201d<\/p>\n Rice was also among various officials who cheered Oregon\u2019s governor<\/a> for providing state-level relief following Biden\u2019s call-to-action.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of 29 congressional lawmakers from both the House and Senate\u00a0sent a letter to the president last week<\/a>, asking that he formally back federal marijuana legalization as the administration carries out the cannabis scheduling review.<\/p>\n The letter was sent to the president and the key cabinet officials following a pair of major setbacks for advocates, with lawmakers failing to attach marijuana banking and other reforms to either the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) or\u00a0omnibus appropriations legislation this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the lawmakers didn\u2019t request that Biden take administrative action to unilaterally facilitate legalization, it does underscore an eagerness among supporters for the White House to play a more proactive role in advancing reform.<\/p>\n U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, who was CCed on the letter, recently\u00a0tweeted a link to a Marijuana Moment article<\/a>\u00a0that discusses the president\u2019s administrative cannabis scheduling directive.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to take a look at what science tells us and what the evidence tells us,\u201d Becerra, who has a\u00a0considerable record supporting cannabis reform<\/a>\u00a0as a congressman and as California\u2019s attorney general, said at the recent overdose prevention event. \u201cThat will guide what we do\u2014and we hope that will guide what the federal government does.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the president\u2019s October announcement, the secretary said that the department\u00a0would \u201cwork as quickly as we can\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to carry out the scientific review. And\u00a0he\u2019s already discussed the issue<\/a>\u00a0with the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to that end.<\/p>\n Separately, the White House drug czar said recently\u00a0that that the president\u2019s action was \u201chistoric,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0adding that there are \u201cclearly\u201d medical benefits of cannabis.<\/p>\n Like HHS, DOJ has similarly\u00a0committed to quickly carrying out the separate scheduling review<\/a>\u00a0the president directed, which could result in a recommendation to place cannabis in a lower schedule or remove it altogether, effectively legalizing the plant under federal law.<\/p>\n The president also officially\u00a0signed a marijuana research bill into law<\/a>\u00a0this month, making history by enacting the first piece of standalone federal cannabis reform legislation in U.S. history.<\/p>\n A series of polls have shown that Americans\u00a0strongly support the president\u2019s pardon action<\/a>, and they also don\u2019t think that marijuana should be federally classified as a Schedule I drug.<\/p>\n New York Lawmakers File Psychedelics Legalization Bill For 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post As Biden Issues A Handful Of New Marijuana And Drug Pardons, Advocates Demand He Release Current Prisoners<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden granted a half dozen pardons on Friday, including for a handful of people with marijuana or other drug convictions on their records. The end-of-year clemency action follows the mass pardon for Americans who\u2019ve committed federal cannabis possession offenses that the president issued in October. Advocates would welcomeContinue 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],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60080"}],"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=60080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60081,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60080\/revisions\/60081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: As Biden Issues A Handful Of New Marijuana And Drug Pardons, Advocates Demand He Release Current Prisoners<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"