See? Thats where it gets interesting. At a local & state level, it was up to one ounce here.
So how much constitutes intent to sell at a federal level? I don’t know what that is, as I’ve never had any interactions at that level.
It seems like that to me too. Its the groundbreaker in disassembling the federal anti-marijuana laws. There are layers to the entire construct. Its not going to be what either side of the extremes think it is though.
Yeah. Like, I had some minor drug charges wherein the pot was discovered improperly, but they were arresting me for an assault.
As it went, the drug charges were negated in the plea bargain for the assault, aggravated assault, and criminal conspiracy. They remained on record but werent considered in sentencing.
Someone with much more experience in the law would have to chime in on how evidence is treated when discovered in the course of the execution of a bust for a different crime.
Its a tricky one. The way I see it- If a gun was found while tossing a place for drugs, you can’t unring that bell. Those charges would stand.
But if they arent searching for the drugs because they’re no longer illegal, they wont find the gun.
Greater minds than mine are probably at work on these legal theories and strategies as we speak.
I could see it reducing a lot of sentences though. Like if someone gets 3 years state time for posession, and 5 years federal, that would reduce a total prison time from 8 years to 3, which certainly would be a welcome bit of news to someone serving a sentence structured like that.
@SkyzykS already brought up some good stuff to think about so I won’t re-hash that. Here’s a link to the .gov website that explains it in more detail.
I think in practice this will be largely symbolic. Does anyone know how many people are locked up in Federal prison for simple possession, and nothing more? I’m guessing very few. Of those convicted of simple possession, how many of those charges were plea deals involving much more serious charges?
If setting free people who did nothing more than possess a little weed is what comes out of it, I’m on board. If setting violent or predatory scumbags free comes out of it, I’m not.
Generally-speaking, this is more crappy governance by executive order rather than doing the political and legal legwork necessary to correct both the law and vast array of federal policies surrounding marijuana. It is bad governance just like the vaccine mandates, the student loan bailout and all of the destructive energy policies enacted by one man’s pen stroke.
Speaking for myself, I’d love for it to be legal at the federal level but I’m not so sure I’d want its use to be sanctioned for active duty military or high-level security clearance holders, so I still think the federal government has an interest in controlling the use of this and other mind-altering drugs.
If I put my cynical politician hat on, they’ve been keeping this one in their back pocket for some kind of boost before the midterms. It won’t result in much of a boost. Broke stoners across the land are feeling the squeeze from inflation more than the squeeze of federal LEO’s trying to ruin their buzz.
Me and @pfury butted heads about this a few years ago.
Democrats have long been trotting this one out to let people know that they have their hand on this lever of power, but they are loath to just pull it, as its a forfeiture of power that can’t be restored to their custody without pissing off just about everybody.
In my opinion, conservatives who claim to be originalists should be staunchly against pot prohibition or federal regulation, because up until like 1937 or something, it wasn’t federally regulated.
My grandmother used to smoke it when she was a youngin.
Wouldn’t the possession have to occur on federal property for it to be just a possession charge? There can’t be many of those. That makes me think the vast majority of them were plea deals (if there even are people convicted federally of simple possession).
I disagree. There’s this silly notion that conservatives ought to adhere to some libertarian ideological purity tests where we weigh a given policy by transporting ourselves back in time 200 years and pretending that we don’t, in fact, live in a country with a massive federal government.
Modern conservatism recognizes the reality of the current structure of government. Modern conservatism should still seek to roll back the tide wherever it can, but not at the expense of sacrificing improved outcomes on the altar of a meaningless ideological purity test. Modern conservatism should work within the systems we have to achieve the systems we want in the future.
I think that the ones who become originalists by convenience when its time to stop something they dont want, either for political burn purposes or so that they can work some pork of their own into a bill need to stop doing that then.
I think we are in a transition period away from Regan era neo-conservatism more toward what Bush was calling compassionate conservatism, but only because democrats/liberals abandoned so much fertile ground by dogpiling on the rainbow shit.
I agree with your notion, but in my opinion modern conservatives are way beyond any Bush-era terminology. We’re now the big-tent party of Christian value counterculture, which is very strange to me but like you said, the Democrats have ceded an awful lot of ground by going all in on some wacky notions. Let’s trans the kids, let’s defund the police, let’s spend money like it falls from the sky, etc.
All of that ceded ground means that conservatives can now have tremendously broad appeal through nothing more than reasonable policy and basic levels of integrity and honesty.
The Democrats have an increasingly difficult sell, what with all of the bad outcomes accumulated over centuries of irresponsible social experimentation done on vulnerable populations.
For me the hardest sell is the totality of Democrat policies, past and present, and their easily-predictable bad outcomes.
Whoever is running the Biden Administration ran that corrupt, demented and incompetent old man on an explicit platform of kneecapping the American energy industry. To their credit, they followed through on their campaign promise.
I know! I was freakin gobsmacked by the brazenness of that, and even moreso that he didn’t have to eat those words served cold on election day.
Then theres the defund movement. How many policemens careers were arbitrarily ended over that or rendered dysfunctional?
Like its suddenly ok for our government to just say to tens or hundreds of thousands of people "We dont need you anymore. Your vocation is [toxic, unsustainable, what ever] and just systematically dismantle their ability to make a living in their chosen profession.
Right, that’s a great point, and why I suggested looking at things on a case by case basis would have been necessary. The sentence right after what you quoted said:
‘If the secondary charges were only based on being in conjunction with possession, and wouldn’t have been charges otherwise, those things would be worth taking a look at.’
Perhaps my wording was ambiguous, but what you’re saying is exactly what I meant by that.
I don’t know what that is, as I’ve never had any interactions at that level.
