Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana • Hacker News Board

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#201

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #75

As an immigrant, this stood out to me: > ... I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., do hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who ... > ... This pardon does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense. In the first of the above, it specifically states that it applies to citi…

Not a lawyer or other credentialed legal expert, but used to closely reading legal documents:

> So, what happens to someone who had a valid immigration status, but was not a lawful permanent resident?

If they are a currently a citizen or lawful permanent resident (the first piece you quote is about the status you have to have to receive the pardon now) and they were a citizen or a lawfully-present non-citizen at the time of the offense (the second part is explicitly about status at the time of offense) they are pardoned.

If they are not a citizen or lawful permanent resident now (even if they are in legal status now and at the time of the offense), no pardon.

If they were a non-citizen that was not legally present at the time of the offense, but are a citizen or lawful permanent resident now (because of the interaction between immigration and law enforcement, that's difficult but not entirely impossible), also no pardon.

You have to both have been in the right status at the time of the offense and the narrower right status at the time of the pardon to qualify.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#202

Post by mikeyouse » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

riffic wrote: post #108

justrealist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially none of those people are still in prison.

but with a record can they get jobs, pass a background check, et cetera? This pardon is a good thing, why are we discussing it like it's not a move in the right direction?

Unfortunately everything in life is political now, so you can't just say, "Glad this happened" if you have some other unrelated gripe -- you need to downplay it, imply it's only for optics, say it doesn't go far enough, etc. etc.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#203

Post by claytongulick » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

jknoepfler wrote: post #160

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act as if they couldn't have gone about this 10,000 different ways. This worked because it's what the people wanted - in response to the 70s - not because some evil scheming overlord.

I don't think anyone wanted the sweeping disinformation campaign about marijuana that flooded both the airwaves and law-enforcement training syllabuses that we got from the federal government. It is hard to expect a republic to make sensible decisions when it's citizens are being actively misinformed. It is also hard to not impute malice on people who push blatantly false information.

Good points.

It does make one wonder why, given the history of known deception, many people have recently seemed to abandon all critical thought and fervently believe whatever the government tells them.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#204

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #59

dessimus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else was the government to continue to systemically hold down minorities in this country post-Civil Rights Act, while simultaneously enriching the Military Industrial Complex by flooding local law enforcement with military equipment paid for by US taxpayers?

You act as if they couldn't have gone about this 10,000 different ways. This worked because it's what the people wanted - in response to the 70s - not because some evil scheming overlord.

[deleted]

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#205

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

bongodongobob wrote: post #88

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act as if they couldn't have gone about this 10,000 different ways. This worked because it's what the people wanted - in response to the 70s - not because some evil scheming overlord.

No, it's fact, not conspiracy theory. "You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, an…

You're missing the point.

All that was popular as well.

This wasn't some evil mastermind scheme to enrich the military industrial complex.

It was run-of-the-mill everyday politics.

The world isn't fair.

That doesn't mean we're all being fooled by some evil genius mastermind pulling the strings we can't see.

It just means that people don't care about what's right or wrong, mostly - just what they want.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#206

Post by oooyay » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #86

oooyay wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget. If that's their logic then someone there can't do math. Between fentanyl, other opioids, and meth they have plenty to do.

Meth is historically misclassified, too. Why are we drawing the line at marijuana? If we lower the scheduling of opioids to Schedule IV, fentanyl usage in the United States would drop almost entirely within a month. Importing clean prescription drugs from other countries would have low enough risk that the reward would be easily met. Odds are, it would also undercut wider organized drug crime. You may find this artic…

First, I don't draw the line at marijuana. Notice how many drugs I didn't list there.

Second, stepping down from fent to heroin, which I think is what you're implying, is not going to happen that fast and frankly the way you phrased this whitewashes an entire series of events that happened that gave fentanyl the dominance that it has as a street drug; the prescription pill to fentanyl pipeline is one built from a cost and strength. For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.

The scheduling of the drug is irrelevant to the problem that there are and will be people who illegally manufacture and sell meth and fent. The DEA has plenty of those people to go after, even if we legalize and regulate every drug today. Why? Cost. The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#207

Post by tptacek » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #170

tptacek wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have to. We've had a nationwide epidemic of deaths from regulated, labeled opiates, which is a fact that refutes your argument without requiring me to provide an alternative.

The overdoses per abuser from regulated, labeled opiates is on the order of at least 100x lower than illicit opioids. The consistent formulation is hugely safer than street drugs with inconsistent dose.

Assuming arguendo that's true, that's a different argument than the one made upthread.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#208

Post by torstenvl » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #60

Digory wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the proclamation says, the District of Columbia's local laws are technically federal laws. So it wipes out the convictions of a good number of people in one of our major cities. I can't quite tell if this applies to military convictions. That would be the other area where the Federal government takes the time to prosecute something as minor as mere possession or use. Another interesting question: does this actuall…

As a fake lawyer, I would also love to know if this applies to military convictions. What other places outside of DC does federal law apply to? (without the need for it to be interstate or some other such clause that is normally required for federal statutes to apply) Can the president pardon crimes on reservations?

It does not apply to military convictions. Very frustrating.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#209

Post by al_borland » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

fyrn_ wrote: post #167

This pardon applies only to federal possession and use sentences, still a nice gesture, but it's a small percentage of convictions as federal prosecution of these charges is rare. More important for it's symbolic effects then for the actual direct results

I don’t get how there can be a blanket pardon on the books for federal crimes, while still being illegal at a federal level. The pardon should have come along with legalization, and putting it on the same level as alcohol. The current situation feels ridiculous.

Re: Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana

#210

Post by torstenvl » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #175

hx8 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a fake lawyer. Even in legal states, you can get a simple possession charge on federal land [0]. [0] https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/olympic/news-events/?cid=STEL...

Thank you. I think this rule applies inside federal buildings on state land too?

It depends on the statutory scheme for the acquisition of the federal land. In some cases the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction, in some cases concurrent, and in some it only has a proprietary interest (i.e., the federal government is the landowner but the state has legal jurisdiction).