In October of 2022, I wrote about the underwhelming nature of President Joe Biden’s pardons for some people convicted of marijuana offenses. What Biden proclaimed was a big rollback in the war on marijuana was really much less. The same goes for the new effort by the Biden administration to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.
Tag: pardon
In an October 6 statement, President Joe Biden declared “I am announcing a pardon of all prior Federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana.” That sounds like a big deal. But, it turns out to be quite underwhelming.
There was much speculation toward the end of Donald Trump’s term as president of the United States that Trump would pardon Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, or both of these men who were responsible for exposing vast amounts of wrongdoing by the US government. But, it did not come to pass. Why? Glenn Greenwald, who played a key role in helping Snowden expose information about the US government’s mass surveillance programs and who advocated in public and behind the scenes that Trump pardon both men, has some interesting thoughts about that.