When President Joe Biden visited his Wisconsin campaign headquarters last week, Chris Syrrakos caught the president\u2019s attention. The CBD business owner\u2014who had just recently been cleared in a cannabis-related case\u2014was holding a sign in support of the president\u2019s position that \u201cno one should be in jail for using or possessing marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden seized the opportunity, promoting his popular marijuana pardons and declaring that he\u2019s \u201ctaking care\u201d of federal cannabis reform<\/a>. Syrrakos told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday that the message was well-received by the crowd of supporters.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he came out, there was applause. Besides that, it was pretty quiet in the room\u2014until he mentioned marijuana,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, the room went crazy. A round of applause from everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n To Syrrakos, an activist with the Wisconsin Democratic Party and owner of the hemp company Superstar Buds, it was a defining moment. Having the president single him out \u201cmeant the world to me,\u201d he said. Biden also held Syrrakos\u2019s phone to take a selfie with him holding the marijuana-themed sign.<\/p>\n The moment was all the more meaningful given Syrrakos\u2019s own recent experience being criminalized over cannabis. Just last month, a state circuit court judge dismissed a case against him, clearing the business owner of 11 felony cases three years after he was arrested for allegedly selling hemp products that exceeded the lawful THC threshold.<\/p>\n Syrrakos suspects he was targeted for political reasons, with law enforcement in the conservative stronghold of Waukesha County retaliating against him over his activism and participation in protests around issues including policing reform. His home was raided, his assets were seized and his partner, nine months pregnant at the time, was also arrested.<\/p>\n It added weight to the exchange he\u2019d go on to have with the president one month later.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was about the most important exchange of words regarding the subject that I\u2019ve ever had with anybody,\u201d Syrrakos said. \u201cAnd it was an honor to have that exchange with the president about marijuana reform.\u201d<\/p>\n It also represented another example of the administration\u2019s increased attention to marijuana policy reform ahead of the November election, with both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris leaning into the issue in recent weeks as they work to capitalize on the popularity of cannabis, especially within key demographics such as young voters.<\/p>\n That said, as Biden has become known to do\u2014including during his State of the Union address this month<\/a>\u2014he misstated the scope of his clemency action during his remarks in Milwaukee<\/a> last week. He falsely equated his pardons to expungements, even though pardons simply constitute formal forgiveness and do not clear criminal records. He also said pardon recipients no longer need to disclose their arrests or convictions on official forms such as job applications, when the Justice Department has made clear that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that a lot of times he believes these things to be true, but he may be mistaken on some of the actualities,\u201d Syrrakos said. What\u2019s more important is that the president is publicly taking these positions and executing administrative reforms in the first place, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve made progress. It\u2019s a slow process, but they\u2019ve been making progress,\u201d he added. \u201cThe train just moves real slow sometimes because there\u2019s a lot of people trying to get on board.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether intentional or not, Biden\u2019s remarks on cannabis at last week\u2019s event could prove especially important in the context of Wisconsin, a swing state he won in 2020 but where he\u2019s now trailing former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in most polls.<\/p>\n A recent poll found\u00a0the president\u2019s favorability spiked after people were made aware of the possibility<\/a> that cannabis could be rescheduled under a Biden-initiated review that\u2019s led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to recommend that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).<\/p>\n Harris also made headlines last week after calling on DEA to move forward with rescheduling \u201cas quickly as possible,\u201d calling the current classification of marijuana \u201cabsurd\u201d and \u201cpatently unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n During a closed-door roundtable discussion with pardon recipients, the governor of Kentucky, rapper Fat Joe and other officials that followed those comments, the vice president also said that \u201cwe need to legalize marijuana,\u201d<\/a> the first time she\u2019s taken that broader position since joining the Biden ticket four years ago.<\/p>\n Marijuana Moment also spoke to one of the pardon recipients who participated in that event, and he said similarly described Harris\u2019s remarks as \u201cvery meaningful\u201d<\/a> and a sign of more to come from the administration as the election approaches.<\/p>\n White House Report Flags Law Enforcement Concerns About Marijuana Legalization For Congress<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo courtesy of Chris Syrrakos.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Biden\u2019s Marijuana Comments At Campaign Event \u2018Meant The World To Me,\u2019 CBD Business Owner Who Spoke With President Says<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
When President Joe Biden visited his Wisconsin campaign headquarters last week, Chris Syrrakos caught the president\u2019s attention. The CBD business owner\u2014who had just recently been cleared in a cannabis-related case\u2014was holding a sign in support of the president\u2019s position that \u201cno one should be in jail for using or possessingContinue 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\/73377"}],"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=73377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73378,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73377\/revisions\/73378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Biden\u2019s Marijuana Comments At Campaign Event \u2018Meant The World To Me,\u2019 CBD Business Owner Who Spoke With President Says<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"