Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

whitehouse.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 351 posts

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

#121

Post by dragonwriter »

kredd wrote: post #16
theklr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rumor is it’s a done deal and they’re just weaponizing it for the election. I despise this is where we’ve come in political theater.

Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side? A bit unaware in terms of US politics, but up here since legalization, life is exactly as it was before — people who smoked just continue to smoke but legally, people who don’t… don’t.

> Would the House ever pass it as it would give a huge win to one side?

The House doesn't have to pass it, resecheduling is an executive action. (Congress could act to block it by legislation, and there is a streamlined process for doing that for reg changes in the Congressional Review Act but, it would take both Houses and -- since presumably the President will support his own administration's regulation -- sufficient supermajorities to overcome a veto.)

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

#122

Post by kstrauser »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #117
tessierashpool wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. The War on Drugs was always in contradiction of the spirit of the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition. It needs to be formally acknowledged as such, and further as fundamentally unconstitutional, but these kinds of victories take time. At least that so-called "War" is destroying fewer lives now.

Measured by annual average alcohol consumption in the US before and after prohibition, the 21st amendment was a huge success. I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy. Afterward, individual mandatory punishment/rehab for those who abuse drugs/alcohol and harm themselves and others should be the norm.

> Measured by annual average alcohol consumption in the US before and after prohibition, the 21st amendment was a huge success.

That begs the question by assuming that's a good measurement. Is it? Since prohibition ended, has alcohol become so uniquely destructive here (compared to all other alcohol-allowing societies) that we've wanted to ban it again? I'm of the strong opinion that it's not.

> I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy.

Add that to the long list of things I agree with in principle, but reject in practice. Our timeline of such experiments is a series of social disasters.

In any case, I think there a clearly distinct categories of drugs. I don't want to live around meth users, because drug itself makes them paranoid, irritable, and hard to be near. I couldn't care less if my next door neighbor smokes weed.

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

#123

Post by astrange »

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…

The part about "enriching the military industrial complex" is certainly a conspiracy theory though. The MIC has only ever shrunk in importance in the American economy, and giving people their used products is like the opposite of enriching them.

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

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

kibwen wrote: post #38
aaomidi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DEA is not controlled by the house.

Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress. The executive branch could always just stop enforcing the laws passed by the legislative branch, but I thought we wanted less executive overreach.

> Marijuana cannot be legalized without an act of Congress.

Marijuana can be rescheduled without an act of Congress; what is on the table is not full legalization (which, AFAIK, could also be done within the executive, because IIRC drugs can be descheduled by the same process for rescheduling) but rescheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III.

And by "on the table", I mean the first step -- FDA recommendation to DEA -- has already been done.

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

#125

Post by nradov »

kibwen wrote: post #69
jkaplowitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen. HHS (one federal agency) has already recommended it to DEA (another federal agency), which has the final say unless Congress were to affirmatively intervene. With that said, they aren’t proposing to grant federal legality to the state-legal recreational marijuana market. They are planning to reclassify it from Schedule I (no recognized medical use) to…

> The House doesn’t have to do anything for rescheduling to happen. The entire theme of this thread is "nothing stops the same from happening tomorrow". One president can order the DEA to reschedule it, and then the next can undo that work just as easily. We need a law, not an executive fiat. Most of the country is in favor of legalization, including most republican voters, so you'd think it would be easy to get the…

Under current federal law the President doesn't have the authority to simply order rescheduling. There is a process that must be followed and substantial changes to that process would require an Act of Congress.

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

#126

Post by madeofpalk »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #58

One moral risk we play is does legalizing our recreational drug (eg alcohol/cannibis) increase the harm done to addicts[0]? While I maintain that there's a logical inconsistency to having legal alcohol and illegal cannabis, I'm on the fence if the consistency should be that both are somehow controlled/illegal (though absolutely not criminal). Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply becaus…

No one should go to jail because the police are "fairly sure".

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

#127

Post by analog31 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #58

One moral risk we play is does legalizing our recreational drug (eg alcohol/cannibis) increase the harm done to addicts[0]? While I maintain that there's a logical inconsistency to having legal alcohol and illegal cannabis, I'm on the fence if the consistency should be that both are somehow controlled/illegal (though absolutely not criminal). Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply becaus…

>>> Another thought on the subject is how many small charges were simply because the police were fairly sure the defendant was up to some other crime, but were unable to make a court case over it (due to difficulty of evidence etc)? It may be that it was hard to prove the accused was doing X, but the bag of weed in their pocket was undeniable...

Then don't prosecute them. It's supposed to be hard to convict people.

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

#128

Post by more_corn »

tptacek wrote: post #111
4RealFreedom wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does fentanyl kill? Because people buy it and don't understand the strength. Regulation would take care of that. So what's your argument here?

That is not why fentanyl kills.

Fentanyl kills by overdose.

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

#129

Post by kstrauser »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #40
kstrauser wrote: post #3

I don't use cannabis. If it were to go away tomorrow, my life wouldn't change one bit. I am absolutely thrilled with this blanket pardon. Rephrasing the statement slightly, like: > I am pardoning additional individuals who may continue to experience the unnecessary collateral consequences of a conviction for simple possession of beer, attempted simple possession of beer, or use of beer. and it sounds utterly obvious,…

Well, not all states have drugs laws that are absurd. At least one decent thing about California, Oregon, and Washington is some sensibility about legalizing or at least not prosecuting non-dangerous drugs. But, sad to say the ultra religious/conservative states are still stuck in legacy reasoning and it will take generations to change minds. And yes, alcohol is much worse than marijuana, shrooms, LSD.

I'm writing this from California, so I was using "neighbors" expansively to mean Americans in general. My experience in California has shaped how I see the argument. I grew up in the Midwest and heard a million reasons why weed was a ticket straight to hell. Now that I live somewhere that it's completely legal and normal for your average person to possess and use it, I can see that, literally, none of the dire warnings I'd been taught have come to pass.

California legalized weed, people who wanted to use it started admitting that they use it, and... that's about it. Nothing bad happened. If anything, I know people who switched from alcohol to weed in the spirit of harm reduction, and they seem to be better for it.

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

#130

Post by ethanbond »

zdragnar wrote: post #6

I don't disagree that this is good for those involved or affected. However, nothing stops the same from happening to someone tomorrow. The past several administrations have been relying too heavily on executive fiat for the optics. The DEA needs to reschedule it. Anything else is at best a band-aid, if not simple lip service to buy votes.

Calling it “for optics” is downplaying the severity of the situation. The reason presidents rely so much on executive fiat is because our actual legislative system has paralyzed itself with partisan politics, gerrymandering, and the filibuster.

Obviously it’s intentional that it’s hard to pass things, and legitimately controversial things should be difficult to pass (and shouldn’t happen by executive fiat), but there are 2nd and 3rd order interests overriding what should be the 1st order interest of effective legislation.

Among these 2nd/3rd order interests: not looking bad to your party, making the other party look bad to their constituents, not upsetting some specific demagogues, not losing personal or party power at all costs, winning dunks in social media, looking good for the camera, ensuring that no third party could emerge, ensuring that if the other party gains power that they are incapable of exercising it, etc

Post reply on HN