Marijuana

The Trump administration’s historic move to reclassify state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug was cheered by some advocates but for others, it fell far short for the thousands still incarcerated on federal cannabis-related convictions.

The executive order, which acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche signed Thursday, does not address current penalties for possessing and selling marijuana or those jailed with yearslong sentences.

“While this is a victory, the fight is far from over,” said Jason Ortiz, director of strategic initiatives for the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit focused on cannabis criminal justice reform.

Proponents of legalizing marijuana as well as overhauling prison sentencing say this order, which does not completely decriminalize the drug, benefits only cannabis researchers, growers and others in Big Weed. Meanwhile, thousands — many of whom are people of color — are stuck serving harsh sentences for marijuana-related offenses. Or they have served their time but having a conviction on their record has made life difficult.

Now, advocates are calling on Congress and state lawmakers to take concrete steps to ensure those with marijuana-related convictions receive fair treatment or be forgiven altogether.

Prisoners and their families look for hope

Blanche’s order reclassifies state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug. The major policy shift, which both Presidents Obama and Joe Biden had considered, means cannabis won’t be grouped with drugs like heroin.

But it does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use. It shifts licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. This will likely give licensed medical marijuana operators and cannabis researchers a major tax break and less stringent barriers to doing normal business.

Virtually no one imprisoned at the federal level is there solely for marijuana possession. But many are there for large-scale possession, trafficking offenses or both.

Hector Ruben McGurk, 66, has been serving life without the possibility of parole since 2007 for transporting thousands of pounds of marijuana and money laundering. He is currently imprisoned in Beaumont, Texas, over 800 miles from his son’s El Paso home. His incarceration has been hard on his son, said McGurk’s daughter-in-law, Ferna Anguiano. And the distance makes visits logistically difficult.

So it’s tempting to see this order as a glimmer of hope, given that the family believes McGurk’s punishment far outweighs his crimes. But Anguiano has no idea how to navigate lobbying for his release.

“His release date is death,” Anguiano said. “I mean, we see all this stuff on the news — bigger cases, fatal cases — and people are going in and out of prison and coming out to their families.”

They try to keep in touch through phone calls and a prison texting service. They’re concerned about McGurk’s health and his diabetes management. It would be a dream come true for him to come home.

“He deserves a second chance,” Anguiano said. “Yes, it was a poor decision he did in his lifetime. He was younger. But he is not a bad person. I think it’s fair to say he has served enough time for it.”

It’s not clear whether punishments would be different had marijuana always been scheduled differently, drug policy experts say.

“In addition to schedule-specific penalties, there are marijuana-specific penalties that have nothing to do with the schedule,” said Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation at the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “Even if marijuana were to be moved to Schedule V, those criminal penalties would still exist and there are mandatory minimums for simple possession.”

Racial disparities exist in convictions and Big Weed

Destigmatizing marijuana has long been an issue for both political parties. Obama commuted the sentences of about 1,900 federal prisoners, almost all of whom were incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes. Biden pardoned 6,500 people convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia. President Trump’s administration has taken far fewer drug clemency actions and does not have an overarching policy directing such actions.

“What many people on the right and the left would like is to move marijuana from this ‘just as bad as heroin’ category and to just sort of de-schedule it entirely,” said Marta Nelson, director of sentencing reform at the Vera Institute of Justice. “Regulate it like you do alcohol or tobacco.”

Studies show Black Americans are roughly 3.7 to 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Americans, despite usage rates being roughly the same across racial groups. Federal-level marijuana cases are pretty small today, but those serving sentences for federal drug offenses are overwhelmingly Hispanic and Black, according to Justice Department and Bureau of Justice Statistics data.

The racial disparity with drug convictions is reminiscent of 2010 legislation Obama signed reducing the gap between mandatory sentences for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. In 2018, Trump made it apply retroactively.

Because business owners with state medical marijuana licenses are predominantly white, the tax relief created by the rescheduling will also likely give a leg up to mostly white businesses, Packer said. A lot of equity programs won’t apply.

“This is going to, in my mind, widen the gap, the financial disparities, the business disparities that currently exist between Black and brown, Latino and white owners in the cannabis industry because licenses were not distributed equitably,” Packer said.

Possible next steps for marijuana convictions

In theory, Trump could issue a blanket pardon like he did for Jan. 6 rioters. But Nelson thinks that is highly doubtful.

“Having marijuana convictions on the record for things like mass immigration enforcement is helpful to the administration,” Nelson said.

An impactful next step would be for Congress to outline very comprehensive legislation addressing existing marijuana-related convictions, expungements and industry regulations, she added.

The Last Prisoner Project and other organizations are planning to renew a dialogue with federal lawmakers, including the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, which includes Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Republican Rep. David Joyce of Ohio. They will also continue to lobby for Trump to conduct a large-scale act of commutation and clemency.

Advocates are also hoping Trump’s order will prompt every state to rethink their marijuana classification and penalties.

“It is imperative that every state review their situation, as a lot of their controlled substances at the state level are tied to the federal government,” Ortiz said. “We’re gonna see other states that are going to need a little help from the public to remind them what the right thing to do is.”

Tang writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, a major policy shift long sought by advocates who said cannabis should never have been treated like heroin by the federal government.

The order signed by Todd Blanche does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under federal law. But it does change the way it’s regulated, shifting licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. It also gives licensed medical marijuana operators a major tax break and eases some barriers to researching cannabis.

The Trump administration also said it was jump-starting the process for reclassifying marijuana more broadly, setting a hearing to begin in late June.

Trump told his administration in December to work as quickly as possible to reclassify marijuana. On Saturday, as the Republican president signed an unrelated executive order about psychedelics, he seemed to express frustration that it was taking so long.

Blanche said Thursday that the Department of Justice was “delivering on President Trump’s promise” to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information,” he said in a statement.

What the marijuana reclassification order does

Blanche’s action largely legitimizes medical marijuana programs in the 40 states that have adopted them. It sets up an expedited system for state-licensed medical marijuana producers and distributors to register with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

It makes clear that cannabis researchers won’t be penalized for obtaining state-licensed marijuana or marijuana-derived products for use in their work, and it grants state-licensed medical marijuana companies a windfall by allowing them, for the first time, to deduct business expenses on their federal taxes.

Any marijuana-derived medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration is similarly listed in Schedule III, it said.

Since 2015, Congress has prohibited the Justice Department from using its resources to shut down state-licensed medical marijuana systems. But the order nevertheless represents a major policy shift for the U.S. government, which has continued its long-standing marijuana prohibition — dating to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 — even as nearly all the states have approved cannabis use in some form.

Two dozen states plus Washington, D.C., have authorized adult recreational use of marijuana, 40 have medical marijuana systems, and eight others allow low-THC cannabis or CBD oil for medical use. Only Idaho and Kansas ban marijuana outright.

The regulation of medical marijuana has come a long way since California became the first state to adopt it in 1996, Blanche wrote.

“Today the vast majority of States maintain comprehensive licensing frameworks governing cultivation, processing, distribution, and dispensing of marijuana for medical purposes,” Blanche wrote. “Taken as a whole, they demonstrate a sustained capacity to achieve the public-interest objectives … including protecting public health and safety and preventing the diversion of controlled substances into illicit channels.”

The president of the American Trade Assn. for Cannabis and Hemp, Michael Bronstein, called it “the most significant federal advancement in cannabis policy in over 50 years.”

“This action recognizes what Americans have long known, cannabis is medicine,” he said in a written statement.

Critic calls the order ‘a tax break to Big Weed’

The Trump administration’s decision drew derision from marijuana legalization opponent Kevin Sabet, the chief executive of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Sabet said that while marijuana research is necessary, “there are many ways to increase our knowledge without giving a tax break to Big Weed and sending a confusing message about marijuana’s harms to the American public.”

“With this move, we are now confronted with the most pro-drug administration in our history,” Sabet said in a text message. “Policy is now being dictated by marijuana CEOs, psychedelics investors, and podcasters in active addiction.”

Marijuana or marijuana-derived products that are not distributed through a state medical marijuana program will continue to be classified in Schedule I.

Schedule III drugs are defined as having moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. Some critics of the industry have suggested that legalization in the states has led to stronger and stronger cannabis products, which need to be researched rather than categorized less strictly than before.

The efforts to reclassify marijuana

The Justice Department under President Biden had proposed to reclassify marijuana, eliciting nearly 43,000 formal public comments. The DEA was still in the review process when Trump succeeded Biden, and Trump ordered that process to move along as quickly as legally possible.

Blanche’s order sidestepped the review process by relying on a provision of federal law that allows the attorney general to determine the appropriate classification for drugs that the U.S. must regulate pursuant to an international treaty.

It was unclear how the order might affect operations in states where licensed recreational marijuana shops also sell to medical patients. In Washington state, which in 2012 became one of the first states to legalize the adult use of marijuana, 302 of 460 licensed stores have endorsements allowing them to sell tax-free cannabis products to registered patients.

Many Republicans oppose loosening marijuana restrictions. More than 20 Republican senators, several of them staunch Trump allies, signed a letter last year urging the president to keep the current standards.

Trump has made his crusade against other drugs, especially fentanyl, a feature of his second term, ordering U.S. military attacks on Venezuelan and other boats the administration insists are ferrying drugs. He signed another executive order declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Richer and Johnson write for the Associated Press. Johnson reported from Seattle.

For disputed reasons, April 20, abbreviated to 420, has become a day to celebrate marijuana; even if this is nothing you mark on your calendar, the collective culture is bound to remind you.

Weed is not what it used to be, which is to say illegal everywhere. (State laws may differ, but the federal government still disapproves.) Stoners are no longer useful as a comedy device, while pot’s countercultural meaning has dissipated as it’s been absorbed into the mainstream. According to the CDC, some 60 million American reported using it in 2022. Snoop Dogg is a beloved media figure (and, somehow, an Olympics commentator). Seth Rogen co-owns a cannabis company, Houseplant, that also sells coffee, furniture and incense. The paper you are reading has published weed-themed gift guides.

Now, Hulu, wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company, is marking the day (Monday) with “4×20: Quick Hits,” a frisky anthology comprising four 20-minute documentaries on pot-related subjects, with family-friendly figure Jimmy Kimmel as an executive producer. It’s less about the drug itself than the arts, crafts and enterprises it has inspired. Given where we are now, it’s not surprising that there’s a historical bent to the films, a look back to earlier times — certainly worse for some of the people profiled, who were targeted by and battled with the law in pursuit of their businesses and dreams — but one they regard with a kind of amused nostalgia.

All the films are affectionate, most are light-hearted and often comical. One, Todd Kapostasy’s “Bong Voyage,” about the rise and fall and rise of artisanal glassblower Jason Harris, is narrated by one of his creations and includes such dumb puns as “fine piece of glass.” Directed by Brent Hodge, “Highly Unlikely” is an entertaining, straightforward reminiscence of the making of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” though it is less about the stoner themes than how the film broke stereotypes in making two little-known Asian actors, John Cho and Kal Penn, the film’s stars. The adorable “The Legend of Ganjasaurus Rex,” directed by Alex Ross Perry, and nearly the premise for a Christopher Guest movie, recounts an act of community filmmaking in the late ‘80s in pot-growing Humboldt County, wherein locals created a monster movie in a proxy war with the authorities, and its inspirational afterlife.

More serious in tone is Kyle Thrash‘s “High Times,” which looks at the history of the pot-centric magazine, its drug smuggling founder Tom Forçade and his suicide. More compelling perhaps is his friend, Yippie co-founder and lifelong cannabis activist Dana Beal, who frames the film; we see him in the nearly present day on trial for drug trafficking, having been stopped in Idaho with 56 pounds of raw marijuana, and also on the streets of New York leafleting passersby with his daughter to “help us legalize weed worldwide.”

Whether or not cannabis itself interests you, each of these mini-docs is capable of holding your attention for 20 minutes — assuming you’re capable from your end — and, being as brief as they are, may well send you to learn more. (I don’t imagine they will send you to smoke pot if you don’t — they didn’t work on me, anyway — and, who knows, might even make one less inclined.) You might finally watch “Harold & Kumar,” or find Garberville on a map, or look to see how things are going for Beal, or discover whether the same John Holmstrom who once edited High Times is the same person who founded Punk magazine and drew covers for the Ramones’ “Rocket to Russia” and “Road to Ruin” albums. (He is.) “Ganjasaurus Rex,” in its 90-minute full length, is itself online to see, and, for those who celebrate, I don’t suppose there’s a better day to watch it.

NEW YORK — Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton acknowledged Sunday that he had experimented with marijuana while a 22-year-old student in England in the late 1960s, an admission that could raise doubts about his past candor in answering questions about his personal conduct.

For five years, the 45-year-old Clinton has answered questions about whether he had ever used drugs by saying he had never broken a U.S. law. During a televised debate here with Democratic presidential rival Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., a questioner for the first time asked Clinton explicitly whether he had ever broken either a state, federal or a foreign drug law.

“When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two,” he answered on the WCBS-TV broadcast, “and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale and never tried it again.”

Asked the same series of questions, Brown answered bluntly: “No.”

Clinton’s disclosure, which overshadowed one of the most substantive exchanges of the political season between the two rivals, is hardly unusual for a person of Clinton’s generation. Two of the Democratic presidential candidates in 1988 acknowledged similar behavior. And nothing Clinton said about his use of marijuana contradicted what he had said before.

But his decision until now to fend off drug-use queries with a narrow response, which could mislead voters into thinking he had never used drugs of any kind, was likely to add to concerns of those who regard him as less than straightforward.

Clinton said he did not believe the episode would hurt his candidacy, noting that other politicians had admitted to using marijuana and had suffered no apparent electoral consequences. He defended his previous denials by saying he had seen no need to volunteer a reply to something he had not been directly asked.

“Nobody’s ever asked me that question point blank,” he said, adding: “I said I’ve never broken the drug laws of my country, and that’s the absolute truth.”

It was the second time in a week that Clinton found it necessary to clarify previous statements on drugs.

On Thursday, a Clinton campaign aide, Betsey Wright, volunteered to the Los Angeles Times that the governor had never used cocaine or knowingly been around it.

The Times had contacted Wright to ask about a state police drug investigation in the mid-1980s of Clinton’s half-brother and a political contributor. After answering the questions, Wright said: “I assume from the questions that you were implying guilt by association in a state where everybody is associated. For that reason, when I verified with Gov. Clinton the answers to some of the questions, I asked him the following questions:

“ ‘Bill, have you ever used cocaine?’

“He replied, ‘No.’

“I said, ‘Bill, have you ever been in a room where you were aware there was cocaine?’

“He replied, ‘No.’ ”

When asked Friday why she had posed questions never asked by The Times, Wright said she had heard “rumors” that reporters were trying to place Clinton at parties where cocaine had been used. “I decided it was best to go ahead and put the issue on the table,” she said. (Interviews by The Times with some people said to have been in attendance at those parties have produced no evidence linking Clinton to the drug.)

Later Friday, Clinton called The Times to say that the campaign had not intended to provoke a story quoting him as denying cocaine use. Senior Clinton campaign officials said they feared such a story might be seen by the public as raising yet another question about his personal life.

Clinton’s Sunday acknowledgement of marijuana use while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford came only three days after Clinton was asked by a member of the editorial board of the New York Daily News whether he had been asked previously about his drug use.

Clinton said that he had been asked such questions, and that his answer had always been that he had never violated a U.S. law.

Clinton campaign officials later described the new admission as an “elaboration” of Clinton’s previous comments and suggested that it and the earlier, narrow denials were merely two ways of looking at the same issue.

“Bill Clinton told the truth at every step of the way,” his chief strategist, James Carville, said. “It’s like the old saying about the guy who’s being sworn into office and he’s asked, ‘Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?’ and he answers, ‘Which one do you want?’ ”

Carville and other senior Clinton aides nevertheless expressed concern that the issue would be given undue prominence and further tar their candidate at a time when polls show that a large number of Democratic voters still harbor questions about Clinton’s personal record.

For his part, however, Brown chose not to make an immediate issue either of Clinton’s marijuana use or his handling of questions about it.

After denying that he had violated any drug laws, Brown demanded of a questioner: “Why don’t you lay off this stuff? What you did 10 or 20 years ago is not really relevant.”

But Brown himself was forced during the debate to respond to a new suggestion of impropriety in a Washington Post story detailing his ties to a company that paid a $400,000 settlement to the federal government after being accused of making exaggerated claims about a product said to help treat AIDS.

Brown, who served on the board of directors of a subsidiary to the company, Costa Mesa-based ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., until he began his presidential campaign, said he had had “nothing to do” with the episode. He said his position gave him “no responsibility and no contact” with the parent firm.

Clinton did not press the issue during the debate, saying his own experience made him wary of “piling on.” But he suggested later in the day that justice was being done as he told a Bronx audience that “the press is finally starting to look at” a rival he believes has been treated too gently.

Clinton framed his response to the drug question during an era when the issue rose to political prominence.

In 1987, Supreme Court nominee Douglas H. Ginsburg was forced to withdraw his name from nomination after it was learned that he had used marijuana when he was a law-school professor.

But other politicians, including Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee and Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, both 1988 Democratic presidential candidates, acknowledged using marijuana while in college and suffered no apparent political consequences.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has also admitted to having used marijuana, but the issue was given only passing attention during his confirmation hearings.

Clinton, by contrast, has steadfastly refused to answer “have you ever” questions about drug use, adultery or other matters of personal conduct on grounds that they are not legitimate subjects of inquiry.

He has said it is legitimate, however, for an officeholder or a candidate to be questioned about violations of law, and has always responded to questions about his drug use by stating that he had adhered to U.S. drug laws.

Earlier in the morning, Clinton delivered what amounted to an impassioned political sermon to the enthusiastic congregation of an African Methodist church in a mostly black neighborhood in Queens.

But faced with continued criticism of his periodic use of an all-white country club to play golf–conduct that Clinton has said was a mistake–his message Sunday was in part a plea for redemption from a black community from which he has so far drawn deep support.

“I have seen myself turned into a cartoon character of an old Southern deal-maker by the tabloids and television in a total denial of my life’s work,” he said.

He told the congregation he had made “a foolish mistake.” And as he cited Scripture later, the congregation joined him in a sympathetic chorus to murmur “those who are without sin should cast the first stone.”

The hourlong debate here between Clinton and Brown, who participated via satellite from Wisconsin, was one of the better illuminations of the differences between the Arkansas moderate and the California populist-liberal.

Again and again, the two candidates clashed on issues ranging from economic policy to capital punishment to labor issues to Middle East strategy.

On economic issues, Brown advanced his proposal to overhaul the current tax systems and replace them with a 13% flat-tax as a “progressive tax” whose simplicity would “jump-start the economy.”

But Clinton, who favors a more conventional middle-class tax cut and an increase on taxes for the wealthy, again derided Brown’s idea as a plan that would benefit only the wealthy and would “triple taxes on the poor and raise taxes on the middle class.”

In answer to a question, Clinton said he favored capital punishment as well as a proposal to accelerate what is now the time-consuming process under which a death-row inmate may appeal his sentence.

But Brown described Clinton’s decision earlier this year to order the execution of a man whose lawyer claimed he was retarded as a “moral abomination.” He contended that the proposal to limit death-penalty appeals was part of a “systematic erosion of civil liberties” and said: “I would oppose it with every ounce that I have.”

Brown said he would favor a five-year moratorium on the manufacture of handguns. But Clinton, while describing himself as an advocate of gun control, said he was unsure whether he could embrace such an approach.

On Israel, Clinton defended what he described as a longstanding U.S. willingness to “wink” at Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank and criticized the Bush Administration’s recent get-tough policy. But Brown bluntly said he regarded the settlements as “a problem.”

Asked about an issue important to labor unions, the two candidates made clear that their allegiance pulled them in different directions.

Clinton said he would favor placing young people in jobs of all kinds as part of a civilian corps to give them training for the future.

But Brown warned that the low wages paid to such employees would undermine working people and suggested that any such corps be limited to outdoor conservation efforts.