This post originally appeared in Teen Vogue.
President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that he would pardon “[pardon] all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana,” impacting some 6,500 people with those charges. (Officials say no one is presently incarcerated under federal simple possession convictions.) The policy also includes all charges for simple marijuana possession in the District of Columbia, meaning thousands more may be affected, Biden admin officials told the press.
The Biden White House released a statement detailing the President’s intentions:
As a part of this proposal, the statement continues, Biden urged state governors to follow in the administration’s footsteps, as most possession convictions happen at the state level, and initiated the process to review the classification of marijuana under federal law. Marijuana is currently Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act, so under the law it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The statement notes that both fentanyl and methamphetamine, “the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic,” are both classified lower.
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Though in early September it was reported that Biden didn’t have any plans for new marijuana policy in advance of the November 2022 midterms, Pennsylvania Senate candidate and Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D) spoke to the President around the same time and urged him to decriminalize and reschedule marijuana. Due to many states changing their policies around the drug and its increasing availability, weed recently surpassed cigarettes in popularity in the U.S. A bill was introduced in Congress over the summer to repeal federal prohibition of marijuana.
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