Are Democrats Squandering The Cannabis Legalization Ace Up Their Sleeve?

republican making marijuana legal

When it came to the last presidential election in the United States, the general sentiment was, “If we can get Trump out – everything will be okay!” The people had their candidate – Bernie Sanders – yet the Democratic party had their favorite – Joe Biden.

President Biden has been in office for 289 days and as of writing this piece – he has lost a lot of support from people who voted for him. The biggest demographic to have waned in support are the youth, who have achieved record lows in government trust.

It’s not entirely Biden’s fault either – although he’s an establishment shill, we have to concede that inheriting a pandemic in your presidency is not an easy feat. However, his withdrawal from Afghanistan and losing it to the Taliban in record time to his vaccine mandates have tainted his public persona and now even people who were staunch supporters are beginning to question their allegiance.

Recently, Biden also noted that they will delay releasing the files on the JFK assassination, which is code for “the government had a hand in killing a US President”. One of Biden’s reasons for not publishing the documents was – you guessed it…COVID!

However, this is not the democrats’ biggest squander to date. Cannabis is at the heart of the distrust and the Democratic Party who claimed to be proponents of legalization has done absolutely nothing to advance legalization or even decriminalization. With the Republican party drafting their first marijuana legalization bill this week, one that actually makes more sense than the Chuck Shumer lead efforts of the Democratic party, we need to ask what happened.

In fact, in the first weeks of Biden’s presidency they fired staffers for admitting that they had used cannabis at one point in their lives.

More importantly, if we take a closer look at Biden’s approval rating – it’s now sitting roughly at 42.9% and it seems to be on the decline. Compare this to Trump’s first year as President, Biden is only outperforming him by 4%, and the year isn’t over yet. He could slump down to Trump-level approval ratings by year’s end.

Of course, there are many things to consider when we’re talking about approval rating, and even the global phenomenon of “Let’s Go Brandon” is an entire can of worms on its own, there is one thing that virtually all Americans can agree on – the promises in relation to cannabis has NOT been kept.

The Overwhelming Majority of Americans Favor legal cannabis

I’ve been critical of all Presidents mainly because I have been studying the War on Drugs and long ago have realized that “left” and “right” are simply metaphorical divisions within a system designed to keep the disenfranchised in their place.

Over the past few years, the entire nation – irrespective of political ideologies – have come together to support one thing. The same thing that was more popular than any of the last three presidents – cannabis!

With nearly 70% of Americans in favor of cannabis legalization – which includes recreational & medical legalization – cannabis is by far the most popular non-partisan move a politician can make. However, we have seen Biden and VP Harris become eerily quiet on that front since being elected.

The entire nation was duped (once again) in believing that these multi-millionaire talking heads actually gives a damn about them and while there were plenty of promises on legalizing or even decriminalizing cannabis, as of writing this article nothing significant has changed.

Different senators on both sides of the party lines have been pushing for legalization, however – up until now we’re not seeing any endorsements or movements from the White House to advance these processes.

While it’s true that Biden can’t wave a magic wand and simply legalize cannabis – he does have the power to pressure certain agencies to begin to de-schedule (aka decriminalize) cannabis as he promised as was outlined in a recent Marijuana Moment article;

While CRS found that the president cannot in fact deschedule cannabis unilaterally with an executive order, “he might order executive agencies to consider either altering the scheduling of marijuana or changing their enforcement approach.” That includes having federal officials start a process to completely remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) without requiring any additional action from Congress.

Considering that Biden has been throwing around mandates like it’s Halloween candy, the idea of issuing an executive order does not seem that far-fetched. Nonetheless, while the president can do these things – it’s highly unlikely that he will.

Since the recent passing of the infrastructure bill and numerous instances where the Biden Administration has essentially said, “Cannabis is not a priority” and have been hiding behind the Covid relief – we can almost say with certainty that Biden will not be using his executive powers to do anything remotely close to descheduling or decriminalizing cannabis.

If you’ve been paying attention…

For anyone who’s been paying attention over the past few decades – the President of the United States is essentially a “face” for corporatism in the US. With recent news coming to light about Big Pharma Lobbying – which hit a record $3.5 billion in 2020, and insider trading by the FED and members of the political class who was found to have 38 Senators with $13.4 million in Pharmaceutical Stock; and that passed a bill that immunizes drug makers from accountability to the public when they sell dangerous drugs and other products.

In other words, the US government has long stopped representing “the people” and have become a cabal of elitists who play by different rules than the rest of us. This is why cannabis legalization isn’t a priority for the President nor his administration – they are all in the pockets of Big Business.

After all, it seems that these days we’re taking advice solely from Pharmaceutical companies who historically have sought to place profits over people at every step along the way. I don’t even want to get started with the discrepancies between the agencies that are “alleged to regulate” them.

You simply have to look at ex-FDA commissioners and their current lofty positions in pharmaceutical companies to draw your own conclusions.

Nonetheless, there will come a time when the people get sick and tired of these games the political class plays and if current sitting politicians don’t start playing ball in legalizing cannabis – the backlash might be swift.

Then again, never in history have we seen so many people bending the knee to pharmaceutical companies and giving up their individual liberties for a little bit of “security”.

Benjamin Franklin said;

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

While this may have been about taxes in the past – it most certainly also applies to all the shitfuckery that’s going down these days. If you haven’t realized that the government no longer serves YOU “the people” but THEM the corporations – you’re still sleeping.