President Biden’s SOTU Speech – Another bad night for marijuana

This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and has been republished with permission.

If you were hoping because Joe Biden was a Democrat and “legalization of weed is right around the corner with the House and Senate blah blah,” then last night’s State of the Union address pretty much confirmed the opposite.

Joe Biden, 40-year leader of the War on Drugs and someone with a family history of substance abuse, is not a fan of drugs or marijuana.

Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

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Legalization just got pushed back to Mitt Romney or Donald Trump, part two. Oh wait, these guys hate weed too.

If you watched SOTU, most of the world was riveted to its opening speech Ukrainian discussion, and rightly so. After that, these were the highlights of his mentions of drugs in general.

• Super high tech scanners now on the border to detect illegal drugs
• Helping other countries set up similar drug trafficking detection scanners and teams
• Opioid addiction is a big problem in America
• We feel for everyone under the addiction umbrella and will work with you and your families so don’t give up on the fight against drug addiction

President Biden didn’t refer directly to marijuana, but if the references above are any indication of his views on “drugs” – and yes, marijuana was a big drug that helped Biden write the laws for the War on Drugs – he’s not a fan of weed to this day. He stopped saying, “Drugs are bad,” in a very South Park way pretty quickly after that.

Cannabis for turning people off opioids offers great hope, but would Joe even consider it? Could anyone that age convince him that marijuana is actually a good plant that helps people in many ways? I don’t even think he could grasp it at this point in his life cycle and long anti-drug history.

To top off the evening for marijuana fans, the second half of the speech featured cameos from none other than marijuana foe #1, Senator Mitch McConnell. If you read our blog regularly, you know our stance on legalization is “marijuana will be legalized at the federal level if Mitch McConnell says it will be, simple as that”. Now that an anti-drug president and a Senate leader are both in favor of keeping marijuana an illegal drug at the federal level, what hope is there for the future of legalization?

Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

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Could the tax revenue and job numbers become so overwhelming – over 400,000 cannabis jobs in America and counting – that politicians all the way up to the President would have no choice but to legalize it at the federal level? long shot They could just keep the status quo, let states legalize one by one, and never change federal laws.

The prospects under Biden are slim. The prospects under a second Trump term may actually be better as he may not be as into weed and more concerned with economics and realize he is on a federal tax mine. Romney, not a fan, because a famous quote of his is: “Only fools use marijuana”.

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The Marijuana Policy Project made this statement after the President’s State of the Union address:

“President Joe Biden’s failure to address cannabis policy reform is an affront to the American people. Despite overwhelming public support, his refusal to support even modest reforms of our country’s archaic federal cannabis laws is deeply disappointing and at odds with the promises he made during the campaign.

“We have waited long enough for action. Prohibition failed miserably in this country, and even one more cannabis-related arrest is too many—especially when a disproportionate number of those arrested are black. As long as cannabis is still criminalized at the federal level, there will be limits to what states can achieve.

“MPP remains committed to maintaining pressure on the Biden administration to deliver on its promise and take long-overdue action to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, while maintaining momentum for reform in state legislatures.”

This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and has been republished with permission.