With six months left until election day, President Joe Biden is doing anything he can to get reelected. Finally beginning to act on a campaign promise from his 2020 campaign, his US Department of Justice (DOJ) recommended that marijuana be moved from a Schedule I substance to Schedule III. With over three-quarters of US states already having some type of medicinal marijuana program enacted, this has been a long time coming.
First announced in a statement by Xochitl Hinojosa, the DOJ’s director of public affairs, the administration seemed very proud of their pandering. Today, [Attorney General Merrick Garland] circulated a proposal to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Once published by the Federal Register, it will initiate a formal rulemaking process as prescribed by Congress in the Controlled Substances Act.” This process takes significant time and includes comments from the public about the change. In essence, this is at least months away from being enacted.
Marijuana companies across the nation are largely happy with this news as it would make it easier for them to get the banking access most businesses take for granted. Tax breaks and incentives would open up for them, and they would remove much of the stigma surrounding the plant. For the Biden campaign, their supporters get to proclaim that Biden is a man of the people and that he gets how Americans think.
The truth of the matter is that he’s just pandering for votes. This only makes minor changes, and while opening the door to further medicinal testing and funding for those tests, it doesn’t solve the whole problem. If anything, it complicates them. Rescheduling marijuana like this encourages companies like Bayer and Pfizer clearance to start changing this plant and creating addictive pharmaceuticals from it. Essentially, the liberals want to kill it off so they can continue to control it and still solicit votes for Biden.
