President Joe Biden‘s traditional action on marijuana will probably have a major impact on the 2024 election, probably blunting the president’s slide with younger voters and also earning him support from independents.
In late 2022, Biden gave orders to the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the effects of changing weed from a Schedule I to a Schedule III substance, which may eliminate it from the rates of heroin and methamphetamine and place it alongside testosterone and ketamine, which are currently available for prescription use.
Additionally, earlier this year, the Department of Justice announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland had” circulated a plan to reclassify marijuana,” opening the way for the new rulemaking approach. The announcement comes as the leader makes a concerted effort to address issues that are specifically important to young voters, such as student loan debt compassion and clean climate policies.
However, Biden’s hold on younger voters, a statistical he carried by more than 20 points in 2020, continues to pass amid Israel’s war in Gaza, with big- scale protests and counterprotests breaking out on college campuses across the nation.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre argued Tuesday that the leader is just doing what he promised voters he would do on the 2020 campaign trail despite declining to verify whether the process was moving forwards. However, some Trump critics claim that marijuana rescheduling is a political move targeted those same younger voters ahead of the election.
The president discussed this during his campaign, and he said no person, no American who possesses marijuana — only possesses marijuana, should go to jail. It is affecting communities across the country, including communities of color”, she told reporters. ” And so this is why he asked HHS and Department of Justice to look into this, and that’s what they’re doing”.
The president has spent four years campaigning and delivering on precisely these policies, which are important to young people and the entire coalition that brought President Biden to the White House, according to a statement from Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt.
Democratic campaign officials with knowledge of Biden’s campaign strategy say this is only a secondary consideration because they believe it will help him win the election.
President Biden is moving forward with this historic move because it’s the right thing to do, not because it might help him in November. It’s about time the country reflects the medical qualities of cannabis, according to one strategist, who spoke to the Washington Examiner.
A number of Republicans have opposed Biden’s proposal, including the House Republican Policy Committee, which claimed in a February brief that marijuana is directly linked to violent crime spikes and a decline in workforce productivity.
A Trump campaign veteran told the Washington Examiner,” This is a naked political ploy Sleepy Joe, and voters will see right through it.” ” Think about this. Biden’s running mate, top cop Kamala Harris, sent thousands of black men to jail in California for marijuana offenses, and now they just want to flip the switch? Voters wo n’t buy it”.
Former US President Donald Trump’s handling of marijuana on the 2024 campaign trail is still a mystery. In a 2023 interview with Newsmax, Trump claimed that marijuana “does significant damage, and yet, from a voting standpoint, it’s a pretty popular thing”.
Trump’s campaign did not offer a comment on the issue.
Biden’s action is undoubtedly supported by the politics of decriminalizing marijuana. More than 70 % of respondents to polls conducted by Gallup and Pew Research in the past six months voted against legalizing marijuana for both medical and recreational use. Additionally, Gallup’s poll revealed that under 35-year-old voters had 79 % support.
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Additionally, marijuana is already decriminalized or legalized in a number of crucial battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada, and rescheduling the drug at the federal level would give marijuana-based businesses more leeway in determining business expenses in their federal filings. Four states, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska, and South Dakota, will have some form of marijuana legalization initiatives on ballots this November.
In the wake of Biden’s March State of the Union address, the White House also saw the popularity of marijuana as an election issue, despite hardly providing a definitive answer. More people liked and shared the tweet, which praised President Obama’s assertion that no one should be imprisoned for possessing a potent substance, than posts that promoted Biden’s proposals for gun control, green energy, and reforming the tax code.
