First modification:
US President Joe Biden announced on October 6 the pardon of all those convicted of marijuana possession, and encouraged state authorities to do the same.
In an unprecedented move, Joe Biden announced that anyone who has been arrested, detained or convicted of possession and use of marijuana in the past will be pardoned.
This mass pardon, which will be made effective through a decree, will impact some 7,500 people –mainly Afro-Americans and Latinos– and will allow them to be free of this precedent in their judicial files.
President Biden said that many have been jailed for conduct that is no longer a crime in multiple states and that too many lives have been ruined because marijuana-related criminal records are a barrier to housing or employment.
The White House seeks that these pardons at the federal level be emulated by the states and that the governors proceed in the same line of pardon. Likewise, Biden urged his Ministers of Health and Justice to review the federal classification of marijuana as a dangerous substance.
Currently, in the US federal criminal justice system, marijuana ranks higher than fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that causes hundreds of deaths in the country every day.
