Joe Biden’s Stubborn Stance On Marijuana

Unlike Trump, who first entered politics about five years ago, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has gone on record about weed for decades. Unfortunately for legalization supporters, Biden has stood firmly against total cannabis law reform for his entire career in public service.

And while he has bent his prohibitionist mindset during the current election push to support nationwide marijuana decriminalization, Biden has remained staunchly opposed to total federal legalization.

While serving as a Delaware senator in the 1970s and ’80s, Biden was a vocal cannabis detractor and advocate of policy shifts that helped create the War on Drugs, including the creation of a “Drug Czar” position in the White House cabinet.

In 1982, Biden criticized the Reagan administration for being too weak on narcotics enforcement.

“Their commitment is minuscule in terms of dollars,” Biden said.

As cannabis legalization started to take hold and Biden’s political star rose in the 2000s, the senator’s opinions on pot did not waver. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Biden said that he would not use federal forces to interdict in state-legal medical marijuana businesses, but in the same breath rejected the idea that cannabis was a reasonable medication for chronic pain.

“We have not devoted nearly enough science or time to deal with the pain management and chronic pain management that exists,” Biden said.

“There’s got to be a better answer than marijuana. There’s got to be a better answer than that. There’s got to be a better way for a humane society to figure out how to deal with that problem.”

In the 13 years since Biden made that assertion, medical cannabis has remained illegal at the federal level, but rampant prescriptions for opioid painkillers have sparked the worst drug crisis in American history.

While Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017, his harsh views on pot began to drift further away from the American public’s growing acceptance of legal weed.

In 2010, Biden regurgitated the long-debunked “Gateway Theory” that claims cannabis use leads to hard drug addiction. In 2014, Biden told a reporter from Time, “Our policy for our administration is still not legalization, and that is [and] continues to be our policy.

This year, with his place on top of the 2020 Democratic ticket secured, Biden has eased his prohibitionist mindset at least partially.

Biden’s official policy outlines calls for nationwide cannabis decriminalization and rescheduling, which would turn all minor marijuana offenses across the country into ticketable offenses instead of criminal charges.

Biden also supports a plan to allocate federal funds to help states expunge existing minor cannabis crimes from people’s records. Even in the face of those seemingly progressive policy points—which are certainly more 420-friendly than Trump’s stance (or lack thereof)—Biden and his surrogates have continuously reiterated his opposition to full-scale legalization.

“As science ends up with more conclusive evidence regarding the impact of marijuana, I think he would look at that data. But he’s being asked to make a decision right now.

This is where the science guides him,” Stef Feldman, Biden’s policy director, told The Atlantic in July.

“When he looked to put down his position on marijuana in writing for the purposes of the campaign, he asked for an update on where science was today.

He didn’t ask for an update on what views and science said 20 years ago. He wanted to know what was the best information we know now. And that is what he made his decision on.”

Whether Biden realizes it or not, a focus on longitudinal scientific studies has been a long-bemoaned catch-22 in the world of weed, with most research initiatives either hindered or completely blocked by federal prohibition.

And while Biden and his advisors have examined past data, cannabis advocacy groups like the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) say the campaign has not reached out to hear their arguments in support of legalization.

With only a few weeks left until the election, Biden’s latest move brought Senator Kamala Harris on as the vice-presidential yin to his yang.

Harris, a former California attorney general, recently changed her prohibitionist tune and has come around as a vocal supporter of federal cannabis legalization.

Still, it is unclear if Harris will be able to push Biden further towards legalization if their ticket prevails in November.

Source: MJH Life Sciences