Last October, when President Biden announced that he would take steps to overhaul America’s marijuana laws and pardon those convicted of simple marijuana possession at the federal level, it seemed on the surface as though the pendulum were finally swinging in the direction that cannabis legalization advocates had been wanting for decades.

It didn’t take long for critics to quickly point out, however, that Biden’s call to review the classification of cannabis — currently a Schedule 1 illegal drug with no medical uses, on par with heroin and LSD — contained one glaring pitfall for those who support legalization: According to advocates, declassifying marijuana completely is the only path forward for a legal cannabis marketplace. Reclassifying, or simply downgrading marijuana to Schedule 2, 3, or 4? That would put cannabis on the level of such drugs as oxycodone or ketamine or Valium — and topple any hope for recreational sales.

It has been a tumultuous year for cannabis policy reform in America, with conflicting interests warring over one of the fastest-growing industries in the US. Legal sales of marijuana were expected to top $33 billion by the end of 2022, largely driven by new, adult-use markets in several states, yet cannabis remains illegal under federal law, and thousands of people are still in prison for marijuana-related offenses.

Against this backdrop, one surprising trend is emerging: push and pull among pro-cannabis advocates who say that legalization may not be the right move after all — or at least not the way it’s shaping up. Their concern? Who will actually benefit from a federally regulated industry.

If cannabis is rescheduled under the Controlled Substances Act, regulating marijuana as medicine, it might, advocates worry, allow Big Pharma to control the market. And if it’s legalized at a federal level, some also fear that conglomerates like Amazon could quickly dominate a national adult-use marijuana industry.

Some activists have already begun to attempt to slow, or stop, legalization legislation, as recently as the midterm elections in November. Progressive cannabis advocates opposed Arkansas’s legalization measure, Issue 4, which was funded mainly by the medical cannabis industry, claiming that it would have allowed existing medical marijuana businesses to control the adult-use market and rewarded industry backers of the measure by limiting new competitors.

Critics also highlighted the measure’s lack of social equity provisions, intended to ensure that people of color, and those with convictions for marijuana offenses, would be afforded an opportunity to participate in the legal industry. Issue 4 would not have expunged records for past cannabis offenses, instead funneling a percentage of tax proceeds to law enforcement.

In the end, even though one survey showed that most Arkansas voters favored legalization in September, 56 percent voted against the measure on Election Day. 

“I’m pro-regulation,” Tyler McFadden, a board member of the cannabis reform group BOWL PAC and former political associate with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told Vox. “It’s a safety issue. However, when regulation comes down to who can make money, that presents a problem.”

McFadden says she believes that rescheduling marijuana under federal law would pad the coffers of drug companies while doing nothing to address the harms that decades of prohibition have caused, largely to people and communities of color through disproportionate and discriminatory enforcement of drug laws. “Rescheduling only puts money into the already wealthy people’s pockets — people who have never had to deal with incarceration or aggressive policing,” she says. “The advocacy community is solid: It has to be descheduled.”

Artist and activist Brian Box Brown is the creator of Legalization Nation, a comic strip aimed at educating people about the complexities of the emerging legal cannabis industry. One strip begins with a panel that says, “The legalization of cannabis offers us a front-row seat […] to see a market be monopolized.”

Caps on cannabis business licenses like the one proposed by Arkansas lawmakers are growing in popularity and limit entry to the few who are able to secure expensive permits, ceding the lion’s share of the cannabis industry to large companies and multi-state operators, Brown and others say. He says it’s easy to understand why some pro-cannabis factions are also anti-legalization. “When a bill like that gets passed, there have to be years of reform to allow the market to open up to small businesses. I think that’s the pushback: We know the outcome. I want legalization, but not this type.”

Reformers also resent some medical multi-state operators’ position that marijuana is a dangerous drug and should be heavily controlled, says Brown. “MSOs want cannabis to be legalized, but they use the stigma surrounding it to create monopolistic markets. Legislators will say, ‘We need to regulate this heavily, and limit it to these six people who know what they’re doing.’ Cannabis corporations use that to their advantage.”

It’s been nearly a decade since the first time a majority of Americans supported legalizing cannabis. Support has since grown in nearly all corners; according to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 88 percent of US adults favor some form of legalization. Twenty-one states now have legal recreational marijuana, and with Biden’s announcement, it appears that it’s only a matter of time before the federal government repeals marijuana prohibition (though there are myriad matters to be hammered out, from banking regulations to which agencies should regulate cannabis to whether automatic expungements ought to be included).  

In practice, cannabis legalization has proven piecemeal and sometimes disappointing for pro-pot reformers. McFadden points to Virginia’s nascent legalization program as one cautionary tale. Just four cannabis companies are licensed to serve the state; all four are owned by out-of-state conglomerates. Small businesses and local entrepreneurs are mostly shut out from participating in the industry. “In my opinion, Virginia really screwed up, because [the law] is very specific to corporate interests,” McFadden says.

In addition to the Safe and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act — which was excluded from the most recent congressional spending bill, to cannabis advocates’ dismay — several pieces of legislation are being pushed forward in the hope that a bipartisan effort will legalize cannabis at a federal level in the next few years. The most recent bill under consideration, the Preparing Regulators Effectively for a Post-Prohibition Adult Use Regulated Environment (PREPARE) Act, directs the attorney general to develop a regulatory framework for when the federal government legalizes marijuana.

In 2021, Amazon announced its support for federal marijuana legalization and an end to drug testing of its employees for cannabis. Reform advocates celebrated the policy, but it also raised questions about whether the company will move to dominate the industry as soon as cannabis is legal under federal law. (A representative for the company told the Washington Post early this year that selling cannabis is not the company’s goal, and that its interest in cannabis legalization is to help broaden its hiring pool.)

If the federal government legalizes cannabis, lawmakers should beware of monopolization by national corporations, says Shaleen Title, chief executive of the cannabis policy think tank Parabola Center. Title authored a paper on preventing monopolies in the marijuana market, outlining how domination by big business is a threat to the existing cannabis industry. She writes that “the recent wave of market consolidation and high barriers to entry for smaller actors foreshadow a future national market controlled by only a handful of companies.”

Title cautions that tobacco and alcohol companies are quietly laying the groundwork with the hope of controlling the legal cannabis market. Take, for example, the nonprofit Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), whose aim is to “advance a comprehensive federal regulatory framework for cannabis.” That group is funded by several tobacco and alcohol brands, including Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA; the Molson Coors Beverage Company; Constellation Brands, the conglomerate behind Corona and Modelo; and the National Association of Convenience Stores, among others. The coalition is led by respected experts from the cannabis industry, including executive director Andrew Freedman, Colorado’s former cannabis czar, and senior adviser Shanita Penny, a former president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

The combination of funding from tobacco and alcohol companies and the coalition’s roster of influential policy experts from the cannabis space has some industry watchdogs concerned about the effect the group could have in favor of big business. Studies show that the tobacco industry has a history of targeting young smokers and marginalized communities, especially Black communities. If Big Tobacco influences federal cannabis policy, it would be a doomsday scenario for marijuana reform advocates concerned with issues like harm reduction, Title says. Tobacco companies “lie to the public, manipulate research, and hide the harms of their products. We do not want them in charge of public health.”

Despite concerns that federal legalization could end up going badly if corporate interests prevail, Brown says he believes that reformers should feel encouraged to move full speed ahead while learning from failures to address social equity and criminal justice reforms at the state level. “As long as [we] have the proper vision for what legalization should be, it should be less difficult to create an equitable market,” he says. He points to Canada as a possible road map for federal regulation in the US. “They’ve run into every problem that we’re talking about,” Brown says. “But it seems like there’s no communication with Canadian legislators, and almost no communication from state to state.”

McFadden says that reform advocates will continue to press forward no matter what. “I don’t think any legislation that is seriously up for debate right now is a step in the wrong direction,” she says. “We don’t begrudge anyone who’s cautious about federal movement. It’s a matter of making sure that we’re taking steps on the right path. There are thousands of people locked up right now for small amounts of possession or distribution or paraphernalia. Those people need to be at home with their families, contributing to our economy, and living their lives without having to deal with the specter of a criminal record, the collateral consequences of which effectively make people live a life that they might not have envisioned and that they don’t deserve. We’re focusing on moving forward because we need to get these expungements through.”

“We’re taking steps every day to a better future,” McFadden continues. “It might not be tomorrow, it might not even be next year, but as long as we’re doing something about it now, we’ll reach it faster than we would if we stand here twiddling our thumbs, waiting for something to happen without doing anything about it.”

Brown argues that lawmakers can craft effective cannabis policies, particularly when they listen to activists rather than lobbyists and special interest groups. “We need to recognize the things that are working and stop catering to corporate wishes. This is a brand new industry. It will probably be corrupted in time — but we don’t have to start with corruption.”

Ten years ago, Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize marijuana for adult use when voters approved ballot measures in 2012. Since then, a total of 19 states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana.

The results on Tuesday night were more mixed. Legal marijuana won in Maryland and Missouri, bringing the total of states where recreational use is allowed to 21. In Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota, though, voters rejected the measures.

Federal marijuana legalization is seemingly stopped in its tracks.

According to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 91 percent of US adults favor some form of marijuana legalization. Before Election Day, 43 percent of US adults lived in a jurisdiction that has legalized marijuana for adults over 21; sales of adult-use and medical marijuana products hit $25 billion in 2021 and, by one Wall Street estimate, could reach $100 billion by 2030. And last month, President Joe Biden announced that he’s taking steps to overhaul America’s federal cannabis laws, starting by pardoning everyone convicted of simple marijuana possession at the federal level.

Maryland was widely expected to approve legalization. Four states with legal marijuana on the November 8 ballot are traditionally conservative: Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota voters are all also considering measures legalizing cannabis, although only Missouri ultimately did so.

“Four of the five states voting have two Republican senators and either completely or majority Republican congressional delegations in the house,” says BOWL PAC founder Justin Strekal, a longtime cannabis lobbyist in Washington, DC, and the former political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), before Tuesday’s results. “Voters deciding on adult use could significantly change the calculus for their federal representatives as to how to approach cannabis at the national level.”

Here’s a quick overview of the measures and where they stand.

Maryland: Question 4 (Passed)

Earlier this year, Maryland legislators voted to put a marijuana legalization referendum on the November ballot. Question 4 asked: “Do you favor the legalization of the use of cannabis by an individual who is at least 21 years of age on or after July 1, 2023, in the State of Maryland?”

The voters approved the measure, making recreational cannabis legal in Maryland, where medical marijuana has been legal since 2013, by amending the state constitution. The legislation made the purchase and possession of up to 1.5 ounces of cannabis legal for adults 21 and older, and removed criminal penalties for possession of up to 2.5 ounces. In addition, adults are allowed to grow up to two plants for personal use and gift cannabis legally.

Past convictions for conduct made legal under the proposed law will be expunged, and people currently serving time for cannabis offenses will be eligible for resentencing, while those with convictions for possession with intent to distribute will be able to petition to have their records expunged three years after serving their time. 

Arkansas: Issue 4 (Failed)

Arkansas voters approved medical marijuana in 2016. Now they considered legalizing cannabis for adult use with Issue 4, which would have modified the state’s existing medical program. 

The Responsible Growth Arkansas campaign turned in over 192,000 signatures in July to qualify for the November ballot. Following an attempt by the state Board of Elections to deny certification to the measure by declaring its wording insufficient, the campaign filed a lawsuit with the Arkansas Supreme Court in August. After weeks of uncertainty, the court ruled in favor of Responsible Growth Arkansas on September 22, clearing the way for the vote. 

A September survey by Talk Business and Politics and Hendrix College found that 58.5 percent of Arkansas voters are in favor of the ballot measure, with 29 percent opposed and 13 percent undecided. However, an alliance of progressive cannabis advocates, religious leaders, and pro-Trump politicians — including Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton — was staunchly opposed to legalization. Pro-cannabis critics claim that the measure, which was largely funded by the medical cannabis industry, would have allowed existing medical marijuana businesses to dominate the adult-use market, and reward industry backers of the measure by limiting new competitors.

The proposed law would have allowed adults 21 and over to purchase and possess up to one ounce of cannabis from licensed retailers. It would have repealed residency requirements to qualify for the state’s medical marijuana program. Home cultivation would not be permitted, and it would have abolished criminal background checks for people who own less than 5 percent of a cannabis business.

The amendment would have repealed taxes on medical marijuana while allowing the state to charge a 10 percent sales tax on non-medical sales at dispensaries. Thirty percent of tax revenues would have been divided between law enforcement, university research, and state drug court programs, with the remainder going to the state general fund.

Missouri: Amendment 3 (Passed)

Missouri passed legislation decriminalizing cannabis for personal use in 2014, and voters approved a medical marijuana program four years later. Now full legalization was on the ballot in Missouri with Amendment 3 — but after little public resistance for months, the proposal faced criticism right before Election Day from several factions as a coalition of officials and organizations banded together to urge voters to reject the initiative.

Ultimately, though, they failed, and voters approved the amendment.

The group Legal Missouri 2022, which is behind the proposed constitutional amendment, says it was written to provide a “level playing field” for the industry while promoting social equity, Marijuana Moment reported. The initiative was endorsed by advocacy organizations including the ACLU of Missouri and all six chapters of Missouri NORML.

Opposition to the measure included false claims from a conservative PAC that it’s an attempt to insert critical race theory into the constitution by creating a position of “chief equity officer,” and the Missouri Democratic Party alleging that it “may negatively impact minorities, people of color and low-income earning Missourians.”

Amendment 3 makes it legal for adults 21 and older to purchase and possess up to three ounces of non-medical cannabis. It also allows registered home cultivation. Existing medical dispensaries will be licensed to serve adult consumers with a dual license.

Tax revenue from recreational cannabis sales will be used to expunge the records of people convicted of nonviolent cannabis offenses; it will also subsidize veterans’ health care, drug treatment, and state public defender programs.

Regulation will be overseen by the Department of Health and Senior Services, with microbusiness licenses issued through a lottery system. Priority for those licenses will be given to low-income applicants and people disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs.

North Dakota: Measure 2 (Failed)

A marijuana legalization measure in North Dakota would have allowed adults 21 and older to purchase and possess up to one ounce of cannabis and four grams of cannabis concentrate, as well as cultivate up to three plants for personal use, as long as the product from those plants is stored in the same location. However, voters rejected the measure.

A coalition called New Approach ND collected signatures for Measure 2, which would have required the state to create a regulatory program by October 1, 2023. The agency would also have overseen cannabis business licensing for a maximum of seven cultivation facilities and 18 retailers. The initiative stipulated that no individual or entity would be permitted to own more than one cultivation facility or four retail locations to mitigate the risk of large companies monopolizing the cannabis market.

Measure 2 would also have put child custody protections into place for parents who use cannabis in compliance with state law, meaning they would not lose parental rights due to cannabis consumption. It would not have provided a pathway to record expungements for marijuana convictions.

The state’s 5 percent sales tax would apply to cannabis products; no additional tax would specifically be imposed. Manufacturers would pay a $110,000 registration fee every two years, while retailers would pay $90,000; those funds would support the implementation and administration of the adult-use program.

South Dakota: Measure 27 (Failed)

South Dakota voters approved cannabis legalization for adult use in 2020; however, the state Supreme Court invalidated the initiative. This year, voters had another opportunity to weigh in on legalization, but public opinion had shifted on the issue, with a majority of respondents now opposed to cannabis reform.

In 2020, 54 percent of South Dakotan voters approved legalizing cannabis. However, following a legal challenge led by Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, the state Supreme Court invalidated the vote on procedural grounds, upholding a ruling that found the ballot measure violated the state’s single-subject rule for constitutional amendments, meaning it was not narrowly focused enough to meet the electoral standard.

This time, the initiative has omitted provisions around taxes and regulations; those decisions would be up to the legislature. The advocacy group South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws turned in more than 20,000 signatures to qualify Measure 27 for the November ballot. 

If approved by voters, Measure 27 would have allowed adults 21 and older to purchase and possess up to an ounce of cannabis, as well as grow up to three plants for personal use. It didn’t touch on regulatory policies concerning taxing cannabis sales, licensing, or social equity.

The measure included civil penalties for violating provisions related to public consumption or growing more plants than permitted. Employers would have been allowed to prohibit cannabis use by workers, and state and local governments could continue to ban marijuana-related activities made legal under the initiative.

Update, November 9, 9:40 am: This story was originally published on November 7 and has been updated with results of the votes in each state.

In a surprise move just a month before the midterm elections, President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he’s taking considerable steps to overhaul America’s federal marijuana laws — including pardoning everyone convicted of simple marijuana possession at the federal level. 

The development was a surprise; although Biden campaigned on decriminalization and expunging cannabis convictions, the administration has largely remained quiet on marijuana reform. 

“As I’ve said before, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden tweeted. “Today, I’m taking steps to end our failed approach. Allow me to lay them out.”

Biden’s first step was to pardon all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. His reasoning was a nod to the many justice and equity discussions happening around cannabis arrests nationally: “Sending people to jail for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives — for conduct that is legal in many states. That’s before you address the clear racial disparities around prosecution and conviction. Today, we begin to right these wrongs,” Biden tweeted.

Second, he called for governors to do the same at the state level. His third step is to initiate an administrative review of federal marijuana scheduling — the federal classification system that underlies the criminalization of marijuana as a controlled substance at the federal level. “We classify marijuana at the same level as heroin — and more serious than fentanyl. It makes no sense,” Biden wrote.

After Biden’s announcement, other agencies quickly followed suit with next steps. The Justice Department issued a statement that it “will expeditiously administer the President’s proclamation” on pardons, and work with the Department of Health and Human Services to launch a scientific review of how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.

But was this announcement a massive leap forward in federal cannabis policy? Or is it more style than substance, an attempt to drum up support for Democrats ahead of the midterms? Here’s a quick overview of Biden’s action, federal cannabis policy, and the administration’s ever-evolving stance on marijuana legalization.

So just how many people did Biden pardon?

Biden signed an executive order to pardon citizens and lawful permanent residents convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law and DC statute. 

Simple possession occurs when a person has a small amount of a substance on their person or available for their own use. The New York Times reported that the pardons will affect about 6,500 people convicted of simple marijuana possession between 1992 and 2021 under federal law, as well as thousands more under DC code, White House officials said on a call with reporters. 

That’s a comparatively small number; most convictions for simple possession occur under state and local laws. According to the ACLU, there were 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88 percent of them for simply having marijuana. The federal government often charges marijuana cases as conspiracies, meaning there was an agreement between two or more people to violate a federal drug law, rather than simple possession: The New York Times reported that, according to the US Sentencing Commission, only 92 people were sentenced on federal marijuana possession charges in 2017, out of nearly 20,000 drug convictions.

Biden’s presidential authority is limited to issuing pardons for federal convictions; he can’t overturn a record for a marijuana offense at the state or local level. However, BOWL PAC founder Justin Strekal, a longtime cannabis lobbyist in Washington, DC, and the former political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says it’s a step in the right direction, no matter how small: “Could Biden have gone further?” he told Vox. “Yes. But now citizens around the country can leverage that example to build pressure on state and local officials to follow in his footsteps, as some governors already have.”

Biden urged governors to do as he did and review marijuana possession convictions at a state and local level as well. Some governors were far ahead of him: California’s Gavin Newsom and Colorado’s Jared Polis have already issued pardons for low-level cannabis convictions in their states, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker expunged nearly half a million marijuana arrest records and pardoned thousands more at the end of 2020.

Wasn’t there a bill to legalize cannabis? Does this mean weed is legal now?

Hold on to your lighters — you won’t necessarily be able to spark up in the streets just yet, though cannabis is legal in some form in 37 states.

Meanwhile, federal marijuana legalization has essentially been stopped in its tracks, in part because of the complexities of adopting banking, regulation, and criminal justice reform to accompany legal weed, even though public opinion (even among Republican voters) and state policies are on board with legalization.

However, under the federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 illegal drug with no medical uses, on par with heroin and LSD, and above fentanyl, which is Schedule 2. Rescheduling marijuana for research was an oft-repeated promise of Biden’s presidential campaign. 

Biden’s call for a review of marijuana’s scheduling could dramatically reshape federal policy and ultimately clear the way for legalization — but only if it is removed from the law entirely, not just rescheduled as a Schedule 2 drug. This would be the piece that would allow all the dominoes to fall into place for nationwide legalization with sales to adults over 21 without a prescription, allowing banks to do business with the cannabis industry, and more.

In the meantime, there are several pieces of federal legislation attempting to address the myriad issues around cannabis. They include:

• The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which also would deschedule cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and enact criminal and social justice reforms, including the expungement of prior cannabis convictions. It was approved by the House in December 2020, marking the first time Congress moved to end federal marijuana prohibition. It passed again on April 1, but has failed to advance in the Senate.
• The Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which has been passed by the House six times since it was first introduced in 2013. If the SAFE Banking Act were signed into law, federal regulators would be prohibited from handing down penalties to banks serving licensed marijuana businesses; those businesses would then be able to access financial services like checking accounts and accept payment with credit or debit cards.
• The States Reform Act, framed by Republican lawmakers as an alternative to Democratic-led reform proposals. It would end federal prohibition and regulate cannabis under various agencies, including the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration, for growers, consumers, and medical marijuana patients, while allowing states to determine their own policies on commerce and other aspects of legalization. It attempts to bridge the partisan divide by including expungements for those with nonviolent cannabis convictions.
• The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, a sweeping bill that aims to delist marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act while recognizing existing state laws; it would enact banking reform, criminal justice reform, and automatic expungement of federal records for nonviolent marijuana crimes.

Whether Biden’s announcement will goose cannabis reform in Congress remains to be seen, but Thursday’s action was undoubtedly a massive boost to the quest to end federal prohibition.

Didn’t Biden fire people for smoking weed? 

Dozens of young White House staffers got a nasty surprise in 2021 when they were dismissed after background checks due to admitted marijuana use; the Biden administration initially had indicated that recreational use of cannabis would not be disqualifying. Employee conduct guidelines were also updated to potentially deny security clearance to people who invested in cannabis companies. “Wait, so do I get my job at the WH back?” one former staffer asked on Twitter on Thursday. That remains to be seen.

I thought President Biden was “tough on crime,” and specifically, anti-weed. So how did he come to support cannabis reform?

Over his nearly four decades as a senator from Delaware, Biden was a prominent Democratic leader in spearheading America’s war on drugs. He has long defended his record of being “tough on crime” — including advocating for large increases in federal funding for the drug war and enacting federal policies that disproportionately criminalized low-level drug offenses.

Under the Reagan administration, he worked to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy and in a now-infamous 1989 television interview at the height of the “Just Say No” era, then-Sen. Biden criticized a plan from President George H.W. Bush to escalate the war on drugs as not going far enough. “Quite frankly, the president’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand,” he said, calling not just for harsher punishments for drug dealers but to “hold every drug user accountable.” 

Other examples of punitive legislation that Biden helped to enact include the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which expanded federal drug trafficking penalties and civil asset forfeiture, allowing police to seize someone’s property without proving the person is guilty of a crime. He sponsored and co-authored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which ratcheted up penalties for drug crimes and created a massive sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, fueling significant racial disparities in incarceration. And 1994’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, partly written by Biden, imposed harsher sentences and increased prison funding, contributing to the growth of the US prison population from the 1990s through the 2000s.

But in later years, Biden softened his stance on drugs; in 2007, he backed the Second Chance Act, which provides monitoring and counseling services to former prison inmates. In his last few years in the Senate, he supported eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. 

In 2020, the number of Americans who supported legalizing cannabis reached a record high, according to Gallup, with 68 percent supporting marijuana legalization. When Biden launched his presidential campaign, his platform reflected the nation’s changing attitude toward cannabis, with support for marijuana decriminalization, rescheduling, and expungements for low-level cannabis convictions.

However, even as he campaigned on marijuana reform, Biden contemplated the possible negative effects of cannabis legalization. “The truth of the matter is, there’s not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug,” Biden said at a town hall in November 2019.

“Biden has evolved a tremendous amount to get to the point where he would take this significant an action,” Strekal says. “And I think this move helps find a pathway to 60 or more votes in the US Senate to agree on a cannabis legalization package.”  

Genine Coleman, a longtime cannabis policy activist who serves as executive director of the advocacy group Origins Council, points to a change in an international treaty known as the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as the reason behind Biden’s evolving  stance on marijuana.

In December 2020, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to change the scope of control of cannabis and cannabis-related substances following recommendations by the World Health Organization in 2019. “WHO came out with findings that cannabis does indeed have medical use and value,” Coleman says, “so they recommended that the UN Commission consider rescheduling the 1961 convention.”

That prompted a process for signatories on the treaty, including the United States, to review the scheduling of cannabis. “So it’s not totally coming out of nowhere,” Coleman says. “It’s actually something that got prompted about two years ago.”

So is this a ploy to get voter support for the midterm elections? Or is it a real shift in policy direction?

Nishant Reddy, CEO and co-founder of A Golden State and Satya Capital, has served as an advisor to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) on cannabis policy. Reddy was pleasantly — but not entirely — surprised by Biden’s announcement. 

“We’re just a few weeks away from midterm elections, so I do think there’s a little bit of strategic political play with this,” Reddy says. “That being said, it’s an exciting step in the right direction for those who are facing the negative consequences of unfair policing regarding cannabis.” 

Attorney David Holland, a partner with Prince Lobel Tye LLP and the executive director of Empire State NORML, sees it as Biden moving toward cementing his progressive legacy, rather than attempting to gain voter support.

“Biden doesn’t stand to gain anything by it, per se. This is only the midterm; he’s got another couple years to go,” Holland said. “I think he’s trying to align himself with progressive politics that undo at least some of the harms of the drug war, and to set up a platform for two years from now that shows him to be a leader in causes relating to equity, justice, economic development, and so on.”

News of the pardons is dominating media coverage, but Holland says the most meaningful part of Biden’s announcement is the review and possible change in the federal status of cannabis as a controlled substance. “He’s setting the stage for future action,” says Holland. “There is definitely a paradigm shift coming over the next two years going into the 2024 election.”