Before the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, the White House and other key officials highlighted policies and accomplishments of the Biden administration, including marijuana pardons, drug sentencing reform, harm reduction, and enhanced drug war enforcement for fentanyl.
The statements were meant to expand on the basic parameters of the annual speech, but President Joe Biden did not end up explicitly discussing cannabis when he appeared before the joint session of Congress.
In a fact sheet released before the speech, the White House said the president would “highlight progress” on criminal justice issues, including efforts to reform the “failed approach to marijuana and crack cocaine.”
For behavior that is now legal in many states, the criminalization of marijuana possession has upended too many lives, according to a fact sheet on the administration’s Safer America Plan. While marijuana use is relatively common among people of all races, people of color are disproportionately represented in correctional facilities.
It goes on to say that “barriers to housing, employment, and educational opportunities” have been “lifted” as a result of Biden’s pardon proclamation for thousands of people who have been convicted of federal cannabis possession offenses.
However, as the fact sheet notes, he also encouraged governors to follow his lead by granting relief at the state level, where their authority may be different and where the bulk of cannabis cases have been prosecuted. The pardons he provided do not technically expunge the possession records, as that falls beyond his executive authority.
Another part of the president’s cannabis actions that the White House is highlighting in the lead-up to the address is a review of the scheduling of marijuana, with the explanation that this is an example of how the administration is “guided by science and evidence.”
Biden’s plan also “calls on Congress to end once and for all the racially discriminatory sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses,” a policy he helped enact as a United States senator when he was known as a key drug warrior on Capitol Hill.
On Tuesday, the government released a separate fact sheet detailing its efforts to remove the so-called X-waiver, which restricted healthcare providers’ access to prescription medications meant to combat opioid use disorder and increase access to the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone.
Beating the opioid and overdose epidemic is a top priority of @POTUS.
Tonight, you'll hear about the bipartisan progress we've made and what we will do to hold illicit fentanyl traffickers accountable and expand access to addiction treatment. #SOTU https://t.co/GcQ9kg1uK5
— ONDCP (@ONDCP) February 7, 2023
While the White House has been vocal about the need for stricter enforcement and scheduling of fentanyl, advocates have expressed appreciation for the harm reduction approach.
For instance, it described how Border Patrol agents had made their largest-ever seizure of opioids.
The vice president continued this theme by urging the nation to “launch a major surge to stop fentanyl production, sale, and trafficking, with more drug detection machines to inspect cargo and stop pills and powder at the border.”
He mentioned working with delivery services like FedEx to increase the number of packages being inspected for illegal substances. Sentences should be severe for those caught trafficking fentanyl.
On Tuesday, White House ONDCP Director Rahul Gupta spoke with reporters about efforts to keep fentanyl and similar substances in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Biden “is going to be calling on Congress to look at that to make this permanent — and it is going to be important in order to protect Americans from the threat of lethal drugs, such as fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances,” he said of the temporary classification of the opioid, which is set to expire on December 31, 2024.
The Vice President and other members of his administration have been vocal supporters of the recent marijuana pardons, including on MLK Day when the President defended them as an example of his dedication to “equal justice.”
A handful of people with marijuana or other drug convictions were among the half-dozen additional pardons granted by the president at the end of last year.
In December, Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, praised President Obama’s broader cannabis clemency and directive for an administrative review into cannabis scheduling as key parts of the administration’s “remarkably productive year.”
In the meantime, as the administration conducts the cannabis scheduling review, a bipartisan group of 29 lawmakers from both the House and the Senate wrote a letter to the president in December asking for his official support of federal marijuana legalization.
The lawmakers didn’t specifically ask for Biden to take any administrative action to speed up legalization on his own, but their enthusiasm for a more active role from the White House in advancing reform is clear.
Xavier Becerra, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who was copied on the letter, shared a link to a Marijuana Moment article that discusses the president’s administrative cannabis scheduling directive on Twitter.
Becerra, who has a lengthy record of supporting cannabis reform as a congressman and as California’s attorney general, said at the recent overdose prevention event, “We’re going to take a look at what science tells us and what the evidence tells us.” That’s what we’ll use to direct our actions, and we think it should serve as a similar guide for the federal government.
According to the secretary, the department will “work as quickly as we can” to complete the scientific review after the president’s announcement in October. In that regard, he has already broached the topic with the FDA commissioner.
Dr. Gupta has previously stated that the president’s move was “historic,” and he has also stated that cannabis has “clearly” proven medical benefits.
In addition to HHS, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has pledged to expeditiously complete the president’s separate scheduling review, which may recommend rescheduling cannabis or even removing it from the Controlled Substances Act entirely, effectively legalizing the plant at the federal level.
In December, the president also signed a bill legalizing marijuana research, marking the first time in American history that a single piece of federal cannabis reform legislation had been passed.
Multiple polls have shown that the American people are in favor of the president’s pardon and do not believe that marijuana should be classified as a federal Schedule I drug.
