Benzinga - by Maureen Meehan, Benzinga Editor.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris apparently coordinated their X posts on Saturday to coincide with 4/20 as they simultaneously shared their newly acquired pro-cannabis sentiments at exactly 4:20 p.m. for Saturday’s annual cannabis holiday.
"Sending people to prison just for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit," Biden said in his X post. "It's time that we right these wrongs."
Sending people to prison just for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit.It's time that we right these wrongs. pic.twitter.com/0avI1FmWf9
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 20, 2024
Harris, who as district attorney in California won 1,956 misdemeanor and felony convictions for marijuana possession, cultivation or sale between 2004-2010, reposted the president's tweet with her own comment.
"Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed. We must continue to change our nation's approach to marijuana while reforming the justice system so it finally lives up to its name," the vice president said.
Later in the day, Biden took to X again and urged governors across the country to pardon cannabis offenses in their states, reported Marijuana Moment.
In October 2022, Biden announced that he intended to pardon all federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. At the time, he reiterated his newly coined phrase that “No one should be in jail just for using marijuana." That pardon covered some 6,500 people with prior convictions but only at the federal level. The vast majority of individuals serving time for cannabis possession are in state jails and prisons.
Based on Bureau of Justice statistics, the Last Prisoner Project — a nonprofit dedicated to the release and rehabilitation of individuals incarcerated for cannabis offenses — estimated that there are approximately 22,000 pot prisoners serving time in state correctional facilities and around 10,000 in federal prisons. Biden can only pardon those in federal prisons hence his call to state governors.
"No one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, and no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either," he said.
I'm urging all governors to pardon prior state offenses of simple possession of marijuana.No one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, and no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 20, 2024
Photo: Benzinga edit of images by Adam Schultz on Wikimedia Commons and Matthew Brodeur on Unsplash
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