Biden Failed To Deescalate the Drug War
In the January 2025 issue of Reason, we’re giving performance reviews of Joe Biden’s presidency. Click here to read the other entries.
When he was hired for his current position, Joe Biden set ambitious goals for himself on the drug policy front. He promised to “eliminate mandatory minimums”; “end, once and for all, the federal crack and powder cocaine disparity”; “decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions”; and “use the president’s clemency power to secure the release of individuals facing unduly long sentences for certain non-violent and drug crimes.”
As president, Biden had the unilateral power to accomplish just one of these five things. Not coincidentally, that is the only action item on which he made progress after starting work in January 2021.
As of early November, Biden had commuted 132 sentences, nearly all of which involved drug offenses. That was 38 more commutations than his predecessor, Donald Trump, granted over four years, although it paled beside the 1,714 granted by President Barack Obama in his second term—or the 65,000 federal prisoners serving time for drug trafficking.
Biden said he would “work for the passage of legislation to repeal mandatory minimums at the federal level.” That did not happen.
Citing the precedent set by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the scientifically baseless and racially skewed penal disparity between the smoked and snorted forms of cocaine, Biden said his administration “will eliminate this disparity completely” and “ensure that this change is applied retroactively.” That did not happen either.
Regarding marijuana, Biden did issue mass pardons for people convicted of simple possession under federal law. But contrary to his claim that he was thereby “expunging thousands of convictions,” those pardons did not have that effect, which would require new legislation. Nor did the pardons free any prison
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