In his first yr as president, Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday on the age of 100, urged Congress to decriminalize low-level marijuana possession, saying “penalties towards possession of a drug shouldn’t be extra damaging to a person than the usage of the drug itself.” Forty-three years later, Joe Biden, who for many years had been one of many Senate’s most zealous drug warriors, promised to observe by on Carter’s suggestion. “As president,” his marketing campaign mentioned, “Biden will…decriminalize the usage of hashish and routinely expunge all prior hashish use convictions.”
That didn’t occur. Practically half a century after Carter mentioned he needed to “get rid of all Federal prison penalties for the possession of as much as one ounce of marijuana,” these penalties—a minimal advantageous of $1,000 and as much as a yr in jail—are nonetheless on the books. However in different respects, the authorized panorama for hashish customers is dramatically totally different than it was in 1977, and Carter’s speech is a revealing snapshot from that lengthy journey.
In his “Drug Abuse Message to the Congress,” Carter famous the conclusions of the Nationwide Fee on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by President Richard Nixon and chaired by former Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond P. Shafer, a Republican who had served two phrases as Crawford County’s district lawyer. Nixon hoped the fee would ship “a goddamn sturdy assertion about marijuana,” as he put it in a recorded dialog with H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, his chief of employees. “Can I get that out of this sonofa-bitching, uh, home council?” he puzzled. “I imply one on marijuana that simply tears the ass out of them.”
By “them,” Nixon meant his political opponents, whom he recognized with the reason for marijuana legalization, and left-leaning Jews particularly. “Each one of many bastards which are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish,” he remarked to Haldeman a few weeks after the dialog in regards to the Shafer Fee. “What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what’s the matter with them? I suppose it is as a result of most of them are psychiatrists, you recognize, there’s so many, all the best psychiatrists are Jewish. By god, we’re going to hit the marijuana factor, and I wish to hit it proper sq. within the puss. I wish to discover a approach of placing extra on that.”
Nixon didn’t get what he needed when the Shafer Fee issued its conclusions in 1972. The report’s title—Marihuana: Sign of Misunderstanding—was not promising, and it bought worse from there.
“The prison regulation is just too harsh a software to use to non-public possession [of marijuana] even within the effort to discourage use,” the fee mentioned. “It implies an amazing indictment of the conduct which we imagine shouldn’t be acceptable. The precise and potential hurt of use of the drug shouldn’t be nice sufficient to justify intrusion by the prison regulation into non-public conduct, a step which our society takes solely with the best reluctance.”
Primarily based on that evaluation, the report really useful that “possession of marihuana for private use not be an offense” and that “informal distribution of small quantities of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration, not be an offense.” Unsurprisingly, Nixon was not eager on that concept. “I don’t imagine you may have efficient prison justice based mostly on the philosophy that one thing is half authorized and half unlawful,” he informed reporters. However that decade, almost a dozen states, starting with Oregon in 1973, took the fee’s recommendation, usually altering low-level possession from a prison offense to a civil violation punishable by a modest advantageous.
“States which have already eliminated prison penalties for marijuana use, like Oregon and California, haven’t famous any vital enhance in marijuana smoking,” Carter mentioned in his message to Congress. “The Nationwide Fee on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded 5 years in the past that marijuana use must be decriminalized, and I imagine it’s time to implement these primary suggestions.”
Carter’s proposal, which didn’t cowl noncommercial sharing of marijuana, was much less formidable than the fee’s, and its sensible penalties would have been modest, since solely a tiny share of pot possession circumstances are prosecuted underneath federal regulation. It was nonetheless a milestone in drug coverage reform, as a result of this was the primary time a president had publicly rejected the concept hashish customers must be handled as criminals.
“I assist laws amending Federal regulation to get rid of all Federal prison penalties for the possession of as much as one ounce of marijuana,” Carter mentioned. “This decriminalization shouldn’t be legalization. It means solely that the Federal penalty for possession could be lowered and an individual would obtained a advantageous slightly than a prison penalty. Federal penalties for trafficking would stay in pressure, and the states would stay free to undertake no matter legal guidelines they need regarding the marijuana smoker.”
That yr, in line with Gallup, 28 p.c of People thought marijuana must be authorized, up from 12 p.c in 1969. However that quantity fell amid the response towards excessive charges of adolescent pot smoking within the late Nineteen Seventies and the Reagan administration’s escalation of the battle on medication, hitting a low level of 23 p.c in 1985. Public assist for legalization rose throughout the next three a long time, reaching a report 70 p.c in 2023 earlier than falling barely to 68 p.c this yr.
When Carter really useful federal decriminalization, marijuana was unlawful for all makes use of in each state. In the present day it’s authorized for medical use in 38 states, 24 of which additionally permit leisure use. In 2024, for the primary time ever, each major-party presidential candidates supported state or federal legalization. And even Republicans who’ve misgivings about legalization, reminiscent of Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, usually appear to agree with Carter’s longstanding place that folks shouldn’t be arrested for utilizing marijuana.
Biden’s evolution on the problem displays this broader development. “We now have to carry each drug person accountable,” he mentioned in a 1989 speech that slammed President George H.W. Bush for inadequate toughness on the problem, “as a result of if there have been no drug customers, there could be no urge for food for medication, and there could be no marketplace for them.” By 2020, Biden was declaring that “nobody must be in jail due to hashish use.”
After he took workplace, Biden issued mass pardons for folks convicted of easy marijuana possession underneath federal regulation, decrying the unjust penalties of the insurance policies he had supported for many of his political profession. Since these pardons didn’t cowl folks convicted of rising or distributing marijuana, they didn’t free any prisoners. Nor did they “decriminalize the usage of marijuana” or “expunge” associated prison information, each of which might have required new laws. And regardless of his promise to “depart selections concerning legalization for leisure use as much as the states,” Biden at all times resisted the repeal of federal pot prohibition.
Carter, for his half, finally prolonged his criticism of excessively harsh marijuana legal guidelines to the battle on medication usually. In 2011, he agreed with the International Fee on Drug Coverage’s conclusion that “the worldwide battle on medication has failed, with devastating penalties for people and societies world wide.” Carter endorsed the fee’s “main suggestions” to “substitute remedy for imprisonment for individuals who use medication however do no hurt to others, and to pay attention extra coordinated worldwide effort on combating violent prison organizations slightly than nonviolent, low-level offenders.”
Carter stopped wanting figuring out prohibition because the underlying reason behind these “devastating penalties.” Writing in The New York Instances, he really useful “balanced drug insurance policies, together with the remedy and rehabilitation of addicts,” slightly than an emphasis on “futile efforts to manage drug imports from overseas international locations.” Nixon, regardless of his popularity as an enthusiastic drug warrior and his animus towards Jewish marijuana legalizers, arguably pursued that type of “balanced” method, urging harsh penalties for drug traffickers and compassion for addicts.
Carter did point out the fee’s suggestion that governments experiment with “fashions of authorized regulation of medication…which are designed to undermine the facility of organized crime and safeguard the well being and safety of their residents.” However that was as shut as he got here to a full-blown critique of drug prohibition.
The next yr, Carter mentioned he was eager to see the outcomes of state experiments with marijuana legalization. “I am in favor of it,” he mentioned on CNN. “I believe it is OK. I do not suppose it will occur in Georgia but, however I believe we are able to watch and see what occurs within the state of Washington…and let the American authorities and let the American folks see does it trigger a significant issue or not.” In response to a follow-up query from Politico, Carter mentioned, “I’ve at all times favored decriminalization and suppose we must always observe what occurs in Washington earlier than going additional.”
Since then, one state after one other has adopted the instance set by Washington and Colorado in 2012. However aside from an yearly renewed spending rider that bars the Justice Division from interfering with medical marijuana packages, Congress has performed nothing to handle the ensuing battle between state and federal regulation. Even the modest step that Carter really useful in 1977, which Biden re-upped in 2020, stays an unfulfilled promise.
