Marijuana reform advocates have been looking for signs that an incoming president-elect Joe Biden will make good on his campaign pledge to pursue cannabis policy changes since the former vice president has been projected to win the election. But they didn’t get any such sign in a new racial equity plan his transition team has put forward.
While Biden emphasized on the campaign trail that cannabis decriminalization and expungements would be part of his racial justice agenda, the plan released over the weekend omits any specific mention of marijuana reform.
Many of the proposals are broadly described, however, and it’s possible that a policy like decriminalization could be folded into broader commitments to eliminate “racial disparities and ensuring fair sentences,” for example.
In any case, there’s been some skepticism on the part of advocates that Biden’s stated support for cannabis reform will be matched with administrative action. And although he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have repeatedly promised to follow through with decriminalization and expungements if elected, that issue did not make the cut in the new “commitment to uplifting Black and Brown communities.”
The page says Biden is working to “strengthen America’s commitment to justice, and reform our criminal justice system” and lays out other specific promises that were often mentioned on the campaign trail alongside marijuana reform, such as a ban on police chokeholds and creating a national oversight commission to track law enforcement abuses. But cannabis reform is nowhere to be found in the transition team document.
In contrast, a still-live page on Biden’s separate campaign site for his “Plan for Black America” that he rolled out while running for president, includes the pledge to “decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions.”
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