marijuana

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News

Where does the marijuana legalization movement stand under President Trump?

President Donald Trump‘s return to power at the White House in January has left uncertainty for the criminal justice reform movement to legalize marijuana. The status of the legalization effort was already fraught during the administration of President Joe Biden, who declined to publicly support legalization but still made critical steps toward federal decriminalization. Trump, whose tough-on-crime agenda includes calls for drug dealers to face the death penalty, has publicly given mixed signals on where he stands on marijuana. Despite […]

todayApril 23, 2025

News

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore set to issue more than 175,000 pardons for marijuana convictions

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is scheduled to sign an executive order to issue more than 175,000 pardons for marijuana convictions Monday, the governor’s office said. The administration is describing the pardons as the largest state pardon to date. The governor’s action regarding cases relating to use of paraphernalia make Maryland the first state to take such action, his office said. The pardons will forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people, according to The […]

todayJune 17, 2024

News

Amid marijuana reclassification, could more states legalize it?

As the U.S. government moves toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, there may be little immediate impact in the dozen states that have not already legalized cannabis for widespread medical or recreational use by adults. But advocates for marijuana legalization hope a federal regulatory shift could eventually change the minds — and votes — of some state policymakers who have been reluctant to embrace weed. “It is very common for a state legislator to tell me, ‘Well, I might be […]

todayMay 4, 2024

News

Is marijuana legalization helping Black communities?

ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) — When Washington state opened some of the nation’s first legal marijuana stores in 2014, Sam Ward Jr. was on electronic home detention in Spokane, where he had been indicted on federal drug charges. He would soon be off to prison to serve the lion’s share of a four-year sentence. A decade later, Ward, who is Black, recently posed in a blue-and-gold throne used for photo ops at his new cannabis store, Cloud 9 Cannabis. He greeted customers walking […]

todayApril 21, 2024

News

For 4/20, advocates call on Biden and Harris to go further on marijuana policy

As millions of people around the globe celebrate the cannabis holiday known as 4/20, advocates are calling on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to do more on the federal level to redress the legal and societal harms of marijuana prohibition, and its disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities. “It is a moral imperative that marijuana be decriminalized and descheduled,” read a letter addressed to Biden and Harris from the Marijuana Justice Coalition, which is comprised of […]

todayApril 20, 2024

News

Harris holds marijuana reform roundtable with Fat Joe: ‘Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed’

Vice President Kamala Harris convened a roundtable discussion on marijuana reform at the White House on Friday, declaring, “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.” Sitting at the table inside the Roosevelt Room alongside rapper Fat Joe, White House officials, and those who’ve received pardons from the Biden-Harris administration, America’s first Black vice president acknowledged the historical and present racial disparities impacting Blacks and Latinos.  “Black Americans and Latinos are four times more likely … to be […]

todayMarch 16, 2024 1

News

Biden seeks to redress racial disparities with marijuana pardons and drug clemencies

Christmas has come early for some as President Joe Biden announced the commutation of 11 nonviolent drug offenders and moved to pardon thousands convicted of simple possession and use of marijuana on federal lands. “It’s time that we right these wrongs,” Biden said in a statement released Friday morning.  Biden announced that the nearly dozen people having their sentences commuted had served “disproportionately” long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, explaining, “All of them would have been eligible to receive significantly […]

todayDecember 22, 2023 1