Biden’s marijuana possession pardons are a ‘seismic’ shift in cannabis policy reform, but few will see relief

The news: President Joe Biden announced he’s pardoning the approximately 6,500 Americans with federal convictions for marijuana possession. It’s a step toward decriminalizing cannabis, which is popular with Americans of all political beliefs. It’s also fair: States and the federal government have made big strides toward legalizing weed, but thousands are still struggling with criminal records leftover from a time when attitudes were different. The catch: Biden’s pardons will help only a small number of Americans with cannabis convictions.

Criminal justice: Still a long, inequitable road for people with convictions

Since 1965, at least 29 million people have been arrested on marijuana-related drug charges, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Estimates of how many people are currently incarcerated for cannabis charges are much hazier, but the Last Prisoner Project puts the number at around 32,000 — acknowledging that is likely an undercount due to major limitations in criminal justice data.

There are state-level policy changes happening across the country — currently 19 states and the District of Columbia have made regulated recreational cannabis use legal, and 37 states and the District of Columbia allow medical use.

Along with those shifts in state policy come options for resentencing and expungement. But the road to clearing a cannabis criminal record is a bumpy one.

“Pardons are not an expungement,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML. “These criminal records that these people have are not going away.”

Between that and the fact that the vast majority of cannabis possession charges are at the state, not federal, level, the number of people benefiting from this policy will be “nominal,” Armentano said.

Bureaucracy: Complicated rules are barriers to state-level pardons

Even in states that have taken steps to help people expunge and seal records related to state-level cannabis charges, the benefits have been limited.

Many early state decriminalization laws included restrictions on who was eligible for expungement, while others made it a petition-based process, Douglas Berman, executive director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, told Grid in September. These processes may include financial barriers, like filing fees that can amount to hundreds of dollars, or practical ones, like time or bureaucracy that can be eased with legal assistance.

“This is the kind of thing that tends to skew toward the most privileged — the people with more time, with more resources,” Berman said. The bottom line is that relief from these convictions is not evenly spread, particularly when a state isn’t taking steps to automatically clear cannabis records.

Politics and data: A politically popular policy across certain demographics

Marijuana reform is a popular policy across party lines. A 2020 Gallup poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans supported legalizing marijuana. While Republicans were less supportive of legalization than Democrats, nearly half of Republicans still supported legalization in the poll.

Criminal justice reform around past marijuana convictions is also popular. A 2022 YouGov survey found that 57 percent of Americans support expunging cannabis convictions for nonviolent offenders. Biden’s timing of this announcement just before midterms signals a historic shift in support for marijuana policy reform on a national level, said Sarah Gersten, executive director of the Last Prisoner Project.

“Even though there are a lot of people being left out of this, the symbolism and meaningfulness of this happening right before the midterms is still historic,” Gersten told Grid on Friday morning. “It shows us how far we’ve come in terms of marijuana reform, and it’s something we can now leverage to get even broader reforms.”

Gersten believes Biden’s urging governors to take similar measures will help advocates lobby state governments for resentencing and expungement of cannabis convictions. Armentano also believes it sends a message to Congress.

“[Biden] has demonstrated that this is an issue of action worthy of discussion and action at the highest levels of government. … That is a seismic change” he said. “By the executive branch making the first move here, he’s really stepped in and stolen the thunder from Congress and put the ball back in Congress’ court.”

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.