Senators Blast Biden Administration’s ‘Extraordinarily Disappointing’ Marijuana Stance
A coalition of six U.S. senators are renewing their call for the Biden administration to deschedule marijuana and grant mass pardons for people with federal cannabis convictions, calling the Justice Department’s response to an earlier request for action “extraordinarily disappointing.” In a...
www.marijuanamoment.net
July 6, 2022
"A coalition of six U.S. senators are renewing their call for the Biden administration to deschedule marijuana and grant mass pardons for people with federal cannabis convictions, calling the Justice Department’s response to an earlier request for action “extraordinarily disappointing.”
In a letter that was sent to President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra on Wednesday, the senators made a dual request: first, that the attorney general work independently to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and second, that the president issue mass clemency for people with non-violent federal marijuana convictions.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) signed the new letter.
The senators said that DOJ took six months to respond to a previous October 2021 letter urging the attorney general to use his authority to unilaterally start the process of federally descheduling marijuana. The “half-page response” was “extraordinarily disappointing,” they wrote.
In its April 2022 response letter, DOJ cited the fact that HHS has yet to determine that cannabis is a safe and effective therapeutic treatment option. The senators said the agency used that “as the sole rationale for the DOJ’s lack of action” which “ignores the ability of the DOJ and Drug Enforcement Administration to begin the descsheduling process and act independently of an HHS determination.”
The senators explained how Garland is actually empowered under the CSA to request an HHS scientific review of cannabis. A subsequent descheduling recommendation would be binding on DOJ; but even if the recommendation is to keep cannabis in Schedule I or move it to a lower schedule, that’s not binding on the attorney general, who could then start a rulemaking process to remove marijuana from the CSA altogether.
“Put simply, the DOJ need not wait on any HHS determination to begin this process,” they
wrote. “Moreover, it is obvious that cannabis has widely accepted medical benefits, affirmed by medical and scientific communities both here and across the globe.”
The letter also talks about the “widespread public support for cannabis legalization” and the “economic, racial-justice, public safety, and health benefits” that states have seen after legalizing cannabis. Further, the senators referenced Biden’s unfulfilled campaign pledges to decriminalize marijuana, expunge prior cannabis records and reschedule the plant under the CSA.
Then the letter turns to the issue of mass clemency for people with federal marijuana convictions. Several senators, including Warren and Markey,
had sent a letter to president in November 2021 calling on Biden to grant blanket pardons to the thousands of people with federal cannabis convictions on their records. But to date, the administration has not sent a response."
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