President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris they apparently coordinated their Saturday X-rated posts to coincide with 4/20 while simultaneously sharing their newly acquired pro-cannabis sentiments at exactly 4:20pm for Saturday’s annual cannabis holiday.
“Sending people to prison just for marijuana possession has disrupted too many lives and incarcerated people for behavior that many states no longer prohibit,” Biden said in his post X. “It’s time to right these wrongs.”
Harris, who as district attorney in California won 1,956 misdemeanor and felony convictions for possession, cultivation or sale of marijuana between 2004 and 2010, reposted the president’s tweet with her comment.
“No one should go to prison 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 addressed X again and urged governors across the country to pardon cannabis-related crimes in their states, he reported Marijuana moment.
In October 2022, Biden announced that he intended to pardon all federal crimes of simple possession of marijuana. At the time, she reiterated her newly coined phrase that “No one should be in prison just for using marijuana.” The pardons affected approximately 6,500 people with criminal records, but only at the federal level. The vast majority of people have been convicted of cannabis possession. they are in prisons and state prisons.
Based on Bureau of Justice statistics, the Last Prisoner Project — a nonprofit organization dedicated to the release and rehabilitation of individuals incarcerated for cannabis-related crimes — estimated that there are approximately 22,000 prisoners serving pot in state penitentiaries and approximately 10,000 in federal prisons. Biden can only pardon those in federal prisons, hence his appeal to state governors.
“No one should be in federal prison solely because of marijuana possession, and no one should be in a local or state prison for that reason either,” he said.
Photo: Benzinga editing images by Adam Schultz on Wikimedia Commons and Matthew Brodeur on Unsplash