Before one of OP’s other posts on this topic was removed as misinformation, I asked under that post what Biden could possibly have done aside from pardoning all federal convictions for possession, requesting the DEA to reschedule marijuana, and introducing a bill for full federal legalization which the Republicans defeated (all three of which happened).
Crickets man. (I actually learned since then that it’s a little more complex – it actually seems like maybe Biden was opposed to the full legalization bill that Schumer was pushing, and there was definitely some level of Democratic opposition in the senate. So maybe that piece of the criticism is legit, IDK, but OP never brought that stuff up to me when I asked what Biden should do.)
That conversation was actually the exact point that I became confident that OP’s just here to shit on Biden and specifically Biden for whatever reason, and any concordance that emerges between what he’s saying and the truth is purely accidental, and he knows it.
(Also, fun fact Matt Gaetz switched sides to join with 2 other House Republicans to vote for weed legalization.)
It’s too bad that he’s just trying to shit on Biden. I have always been pro legalization.
Honestly I kind of like that the states are going back to having radically different systems. That was the way it was supposed to be – like if you think weed should be legal, or illegal, then try it out, and everyone can watch it in practice and see how it works.
I don’t like that it’s so polarized to only two big centers of gravity and one of them is Naziism but the idea of it being a variety seems like more of the idea of what the US was supposed to be.
I looked into this and found this legal sidebar somewhat informative.
In classic Biden/dem fashion, while it’s true he has done something that could lead towards delivering on his campaign promise, it’s comically little and falls far short of his full power. Why hasn’t he tried issuing executive orders to legalize or reschedule and force opponents of legalization to crawl out of the woodwork in a lawsuit? Alternatively, the DEA is part of the executive branch. He could immediately replace directors there with those who will implement this policy - why hasn’t this been done?
Biden literally threw up his hands and said “awww but my allies in Congress won’t let me do it.” Disingenuous at best.
I mean it’s the classic strategy. The reason everyone accuses them of doing fucking nothing is because there’s always a throw it to congress mentality, then congress is inevitably deadlocked by like two guys because of the way the system is set up, and then whenever it isn’t deadlocked, suddenly there’s some other internal opposition, until it can be deadlocked again in the next 15 minutes. People at this point want other more theoretical measures enacted, like when people were talking about putting abortion clinics on federal land or in national parks. I don’t even think stuff like that would be a bad play. Even if it wasn’t necessarily successful, it’d do a hell of a lot to show that there’s something more being done than the normal state of affairs, which is exactly what people want.
In classic Biden/dem fashion, while it’s true he has done something that could lead towards delivering on his campaign promise, it’s comically little and falls far short of his full power.
This would be completely accurate if you took the “Biden/” part out of it. I know it’s a popular myth that Biden is part of this pattern, but in actuality he did:
- Pass a climate bill that targets 40% reduction in emissions by 2030
- Forgave around $144 billion in student loan debt
- Boosted income for the poorest wage earners by a huge amount (outpacing even the pretty historic inflation of the last couple of years as follow-on effects from Covid took hold)
- Raised corporate tax significantly to pay for all of the above
He tried to do more on all fronts, but it’s far from comical and the fact that he got that much done over stiff Republican resistance is to me pretty fuckin impressive. Example – he tried to forgive half a trillion dollars of student loan debt through some direct executive action, and it went to the Supreme Court and they told him no.
Like I said though, I think marijuana is actually one isolated instance where that criticism that he wasn’t actually trying to support full legalization / wasn’t doing as much as he could to get it done might be halfway warranted. But to me that’s more of an exception to his usual pattern.
