Recently Vice President Kamala Harris convened a roundtable about marijuana and criminal justice reform with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), rapper Fat Joe, and individuals previously convicted of the offense of simple possession of marijuana who have been pardoned by President Biden.
The message Harris delivered was simple: the Biden administration believes that “no one should be jailed for simply using” marijuana. But Harris took her comments a step further, stating to the group and assembled media that it’s “absurd” that marijuana is a Schedule I drug.
First, we should address what Harris left unsaid. Since his election, Biden has demonstrated that criminal justice reform is possible without commercializing today’s industrialized, high-potency THC drugs or legalizing dangerous psychoactive drugs.
Second, we should also address who was not in attendance at the meeting. There was no one representing social justice advocates, scientists and public health experts concerned about the harms of marijuana commercialization. Many of these experts have studied the socioeconomic effects of lax marijuana policies, including the fact that pot shops are often concentrated in and target poorer and non-white communities on purpose, much like menthol cigarettes target Black communities. One of us, as the first drug czar for this nation’s first Black president, always said that “legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary” partially because of the disproportionate impact that addiction and drug use have on our most vulnerable.
Our country has made significant progress with respect to criminal justice reform without legalizing marijuana. According to a 2023 U.S. Sentencing Commission report, we reduced the number of offenders sentenced for simple marijuana possession from 2,172 in 2014 to just 145 in 2021. The facts also dispel the popular myth that our prisons are filled with people incarcerated for smoking a joint. As of January 2022, in fact, no one was in federal prison solely for simple marijuana possession. Likewise, there are few people if any serving time in state prisons for simple, low-level possession.
While Biden should be praised for his stance opposing legalization and supporting expungement and removing penalties, rescheduling marijuana would be an abandonment of his efforts to keep drugs off our streets.
Drug scheduling is not a harm index. It is a legal term that categorizes drugs based on medical benefit and potential for abuse. From a scientific basis, marijuana fails to meet the statutory requirements for any schedule other than Schedule I. Marijuana is not one medical product, but rather represents hundreds of thousands of different products completely untested and unregulated by federal authorities. Therefore, it fails the first legal test for rescheduling.
It is also more dangerous than people think. In fact, the drug has undergone a transformation in its addictive potential. Today’s marijuana is nothing like Woodstock-era weed.
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BY GIL KERLIKOWSKE AND KEVIN SABET, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 03/29/24 9:00 AM ET
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Source : The Hill
Link to original : Kamala Harris is gravely wrong about rescheduling marijuana
