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“This is a gamechanger.” That was my first thought as a retired police officer, upon learning President Joe Biden had signed an executive order pardoning people convicted of federal simple possession marijuana charges, and had asked for the secretary of Health and Human Services and attorney general to review its scheduling under the Controlled Substances Act.
After two decades in law enforcement, I’ve spent the past ten years working to reform the criminal justice system, starting with the War on Drugs. Few policies in American history have done as much damage as this racist, ineffectual, cruel set of laws that have distorted the goals of policing, produced exorbitant profits for organized crime, and criminalized millions of people needlessly and counterproductively.
Biden’s announcement yesterday holds the potential to be the most significant reform of federal drug law since former President Richard Nixon began the War on Drugs in earnest in 1971. While I applaud the move to pardon low-level federal marijuana offenders, this is mostly a symbolic gesture: state and local arrests for marijuana far outnumber those by the federal government. This order will only clear the slate for about 6,500 people.