While the presidential debate memes aren’t slowing down and some of the hottest topics of the evening were President Joe Biden’s performance and whether he lied about his golf handicap, debate moderators failed to ask the candidates about marijuana. The once too-hot-for-TV topic might play a role in this year’s election as voters consider Biden’s failure to deliver on reform promises and Donald Trump’s haphazard threats.
According to an April Pew Research poll, 88% of U.S. adults say marijuana should be legal in some form. Only 11% said it should remain prohibited. That’s a dramatic change from the same question asked less than a year ago that found 70% of Americans favored legalization. In the year 2000, only 31% said they wanted to see weed legalized — so more than half of the country has switched to the pro-weed side in the last 24 years. That means cannabis reform will likely be on the minds of a lot of voters come November, and the topic’s glaring absence from the debate speaks either to the media’s inability to grasp the weight of the weed bloc or the candidates’ reticence to broach the subject.
It’s tough to say which way either Biden or former President Donald Trump will go on weed, but there are some hints to be found from the past and signals to be deciphered in the present.
Biden
Biden’s campaign has clearly recognized the necessity of proving that he’s pro-weed. Near the end of last month, team Biden pumped out pro-weed rhetoric on its website and in political ads, attempting to use the modest reforms made in recent years as proof of the president’s stance on the topic.
“Joe Biden has been clear for a long time that our nation’s marijuana laws are outdated and are failing communities, particularly communities of color,” the website reads. “When he ran in 2020, Biden promised to fight to ensure that no one is in jail for marijuana possession alone. And since taking office, Joe Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris have led the most significant federal reform to our nation’s approach to marijuana in history.”
The administration has spoken about releasing cannabis prisoners numerous times over the last four years and Biden rocked the weed world by announcing in 2022 that he would be pardoning all federal convictions of simple marijuana possession. The White House claimed that the pardons would affect thousands of individuals.
It certainly seemed like he was following through on his promise to free weed prisoners, until advocates began to take a closer look at the proclamation.
For one thing, the pardons officially forgave the offenses, but did not expunge them. In other words, small-time cannabis offenders were officially forgiven, but their criminal records remained intact, leading to no substantial improvement on their situations. And while the pardons affected those who had already been convicted, they didn’t change the law, meaning federal agents can still arrest someone for simple marijuana possession.
This brings up the next issue with the pardons: Simple marijuana possession is rarely a federal offense. Most cannabis arrests for possession of small amounts are state-level offenses, meaning the president’s pardons didn’t affect anyone in a federal prison (no one is currently incarcerated in a federal prison for simple marijuana possession) or anyone in state prison.
So while the pardons made for great news releases and presidential sound bites, they didn’t actually free a single marijuana prisoner.
Nevertheless, Biden has used the pardons on numerous occasions (including during his State of the Union speech in March) to incorrectly claim that he was “expunging thousands of convictions for the mere possession, because no one should be jailed for simply using or having it on their record.”
Meanwhile, that “most significant federal reform” mentioned by the campaign likely refers to the administration’s move to reschedule cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, which has been touted as a sign that greater reforms are on the way by some.
What’s definitely true is that the move falls well short of promises from Biden and Harris in 2020 that the administration would deschedule and decriminalize the drug.
Trump
Under Trump’s watch, then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo, a piece of Obama-era direction given to federal prosecutors, instructing them to allow states that have legalized marijuana to operate their programs without interference.
Although the Department of Justice (DOJ) has continued to leave state cannabis programs unmolested, the move by Sessions made it so that federal prosecutors are no longer held in check by policy, and any one of them could start going after legal states if they felt like it.
In Trump’s defense, during his presidency, he repeatedly voiced opposition to cannabis legalization but left the matter up to states. And although Sessions rescinded the Cole memo, the DOJ never ended up actually targeting any state programs. In fact, Trump mostly steered clear of any discussion about cannabis reform during his presidency.
But that may have changed in recent years. The most concerning statement on the topic from the former president was in 2023 at a New Hampshire town hall.
“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said. “Because it’s the only way.”
He has seemingly walked back the statement more recently, indicating that he’d only seek the death penalty for certain drug trafficking offenses.