This is a good perspective of the tangible effect https://mobile.twitter.com/SwampCommunist/status/1578117821573103616
Damn. Wasn’t too familiar with weed law in the US but seeing this, yeah. This is bad.
I’ve learned that pretty much anything that a US admin does that looks good on the surface is at best preformative and at worst outright evil.
Usually both.
It seems that this was carefully deliberated to have exact zero impact but sound like an actual reform.
And now dem shills and other western pseudoleft will be spamming everywhere “Biden freed convicts so he’s the leftiest president ever and also least racist”.
it’s cynical and it works
It’s definitely not zero impact. Any felony convictions stick around for a long time on background checks and weigh down people’s prospects in careers, housing, and any number of other realms of life. Also, states often follow the federal government’s lead, like we saw with the 90’s crime bill and 3 strikes laws. But yes, realistically this should just be seen as a mainly symbolic first step rather than as a fundamental change in itself.
It’s also important to note that it’s difficult to undo these policies. First, pardons have to be applied carefully. There are cases where people got out of a more serious charge by pleading down to simple possession. There will need to be a case-by-case review. The other is that Biden is not a dictator. He is bound by Congress, which currently is resisting efforts to reschedule marijuana. The politics of this is complex. The majority of the populace wants legalization, but political distortions built into the US’s political system are preventing that change from going into effect.
