Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, the Democratic leader behind the state’s redistricting effort, was arrested Thursday in connection with an alleged bribery and racketeering scheme.
In a 45-page indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, Lucas and six co-defendants were charged with conspiring to distribute and possess marijuana, conspiring to launder money, laundering money, and committing bribery by distributing large quantities of illegal marijuana under the auspices of her legal medical cannabis business.
Lucas, an 82-year-old great-grandmother, has served in the Virginia Senate since 1992. She faces five of the eight charges included in the indictment. These charges arrive five months after the FBI raided Lucas’s office in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the neighboring cannabis dispensary she co-owns.
More fascist BS.
I’d encourage you to read more than a soundbite especially if you’re looking for specifics. Here’s an actual interview transcript with Biden from May 2020, interviewed by Charlamagne tha God no less, where he asks the specific question of Biden and receives the specific answer:
Charlamagne tha God: (15:42) Vice President Biden, I’ve read some of your black agenda and you say that you would decriminalize marijuana. What’s the difference between legalizing it and decriminalizing?
Joe Biden: (15:51) Because they’re trying to find out whether or not there is any impact on the use of marijuana, not in leading you to other drugs, but what it affects. Does it affect long term development of the brain and we should wait until the studies are done. I think science matters.
source
Biden does make the distinction that he’s not going for full legalization, and further, that he’s going to defer to science instead of making the call himself.
He didn’t promise it deschedule it.
Weasel words in your sentence. “In fact, it will lead to none.” A pardon is far more than letting someone out of jail. Its removing the stain of the conviction from a persons record enabling them to seek employment without having to report it, pass background checks for jobs that require it, and makes you eligible for subsidized housing with that conviction removed.
“In addition to individual pardons, Biden granted clemency to 6,500 individuals convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law, part of his broader initiative to address racial and systemic inequities in drug enforcement”
source
6500 people received the benefit of that pardon because the pardon went back all the way to 1992 convictions. Your own linked-through source says the number of pardoned people is 6577 Why didn’t you mention that and instead just quote your “no one” sentence?
Are you going to counter that 6577 people is almost no one? I don’t necessarily disagree, but that’s because most simple possession charges are state or local offenses where the President of the United States has no pardon power. Again, your own source says this. If that’s your beef, take it up with states and cities.
All politicians are assholes, but Biden’s actions helping Americans’ interactions with marijuana in the legal system are more progressive and a larger improvement in our society than any other President in over 60 years. You can complain that he didn’t do enough, but I think its disingenuous for you to portray the positive actions forward and nothing.