Hickenlooper Might Be Worse Than Biden On Marijuana Policy, But Hickenlooper Isn't A Serious Contender And Isn't A Threat To Pot Smokers The Way Biden Is

Joe Biden-- The Lesser Evil

All the Democrats running for president claim-- to one degree or another-- that they favor legalizing marijuana nationally... except former Colorado Governor John Frackenlooper, who fought against marijuana legalization when his own state ignored him and passed it by referendum. (He campaigned against Amendment 64 but he passed 55.32% to 44.58%. It garnered 1,383,139 votes. The most votes Frackenlooper ever got for anything he's run for was 1,006,433 (49.30) when he was reelected governor in 2014. Now he's pretending to run for president, knowing full well he won't even make it into the top tier in Colorado, where is very much disliked, in part because of his anti-marijuana approach.

The other candidates, like I said, all say they favor legalization. Do they though? On Thursday, Marijuana Moment pointed out that Biden's as full of shit on marijuana as he is on everything else. While he was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he helped shape drug policy "during an era of heightened scaremongering and criminalization [and] was among the most prominent Democratic drug warriors in Congress for decades. And while many 2020 Democratic candidates have evolved significantly on drug policy-- and particularly marijuana reform-- over the years, Biden has barely budged. While he’s recognized the long-term harms of certain pieces of legislation he supported and has made some efforts to attempt to repair that damage, overall he’s maintained a firm opposition to cannabis legalization-- a stance that sets him far apart from every other major Democratic contender." There are virtually no issues Biden has been good on without being forced into a change of heart. In general, he's better than Trump, but that's a low bar, especially for people are don't cotton to the Democratic Party's repulsive policy of forcing voters to pick between the lesser of two evils. Biden is truly the lesser evil candidate. The are virtually no prominent Democratic politicians with worse instincts than Status Quo Joe.

A look at Biden’s record on marijuana policy over past decades reveals a politician whose views on drugs are mostly set in stone and increasingly out of touch with lawmakers in his party and voters across the political spectrum. He’s sponsored some of the country’s most punitive drug legislation, including the notorious 1994 crime bill. In some cases, he has addressed the consequences of his anti-drug legislative activism. But a closer examination exposes patterns: he has long maintained that drugs should be illegal across the board, that the criminal justice system is well-equipped to handle drug offenders and that regulating marijuana is a mistake.

The 1980s was a time of extraordinary upheaval for U.S. drug policy, with lawmakers pushing numerous bills meant to scare people away from using controlled substances by way of propaganda and threats of incarceration. Biden was among the loudest and most extreme voices backing anti-drug measures. While there has been a shift in tone over the years, his track record will likely be a point of contention on the campaign trail.

Biden introduced the Comprehensive Narcotics Control Act of 1986. The wide-ranging anti-drug legislation called for the establishment of a cabinet position to develop the federal government’s drug enforcement policies-- a role that fits the description of the “drug czar” position, a term the senator coined in 1982 and which was subsequently created to lead the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

“We need one person to call the shots,” Biden said at the time, while also criticizing the Reagan administration’s anti-drug efforts, saying “their commitment is minuscule in terms of dollars.”

The bill would have also expanded Justice Department authority to seize assets in drug cases, impose mandatory minimum sentences for offenses involving certain amounts of controlled substances, increase other drug penalties and add new substances to the CSA. It also authorized appropriations for the U.S. Department of Defense for “enhanced drug enforcement assistance”-- an early indication of what would become an increasingly militarized drug war-- and asked the military to “prepare a list of defense facilities which can be used as detention facilities for felons.”

Further, the legislation would have required the secretary of the Interior to create a program to eradicate marijuana on Indian territory. It also included a provision for Congress to urge the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs to create a new international convention “against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances,” and called for “more effective implementation of existing conventions relating to narcotics.” It also proposed setting aside money for the development of “herbicides for use in aerial eradication of coca,” which would later become a key part of the controversial Plan Colombia program.

...Another expansive anti-drug bill the senator introduced was called the Federal Crime Control Act of 1989. Among other things, the legislation would have expanded asset forfeiture authorities, required individuals charged for certain drug crimes to be held for sentencing or appeal rather than released on bail and mandated that the attorney general “aggressively use criminal, civil, and other equitable remedies…against drug offenders.”

...Biden also introduced the National Drug Control Strategy Act in 1990. It included a number of jarring provisions meant to deter drug use, including the establishment of “military-style boot camp prisons” that could be used as alternative sentencing options for people convicted of drug-related offenses who tested positive for a controlled substance at the time of an arrest or following an arrest.

The legislation also called for a requirement that people pass a drug test as a condition of probation or parole before a sentence is imposed, and also subsequently submit to at least two drug tests. It would also require federal employees working in a division that deals with children to pass a background check, specifying that any drug conviction on a person’s record is barred from employment.

Then there’s the propaganda provision of the bill, under which the director of the ONDCP would be required to “provide resources to assist members of the motion picture and television industries in the production of programs that carry anti-drug messages.”

If that wasn’t enough, the bill would also have authorized appropriations under the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act to be used to train and assist military and law enforcement in their anti-drug production and trafficking operations. A separate provision would have encouraged the Central Intelligence Agency to enhance human intelligence that could be used to combat international drug trafficking.

Biden introduced a bill on capital punishment in 1990 that was later amended to include a provision known as the Drug Kingpin Death Penalty Act, which called for the imposition of capital punishment for anyone who killed someone while carrying out a federal drug offenses and was the head of a criminal enterprise who qualified for mandatory life imprisonment.

“There is now a death penalty,” he said later, in a 1991 floor speech. “If you are a major drug dealer, involved in the trafficking of drugs, and murder results in your activities, you go to death.”

In that same speech, he touted the expansion of civil asset forfeiture, saying the “government can take everything you own, from your car to your house to your bank account.”

The proposal also increased penalties for certain drug offenses committed near schools or colleges and directed the attorney general to “develop a model program of strategies and tactics for establishing and maintaining drug-free school zones.” It declared that drug offenses committed by juveniles would be treated “as offenses warranting adult prosecution,” set aside funds to create a national drug and related crime tip hotline and authorized “payment of awards for information or assistance leading to a civil or criminal forfeiture.”

The Senate passed that amended legislation, and Biden was among those who voted in favor of it.

The Biden-Thurmond Violent Crime Control Act of 1991, which the senator sponsored alongside segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), proposed prohibiting people with “serious drug misdemeanor” convictions from purchasing firearms and creating a mandatory five year penalty for firearms possession by “serious drug offenders.”

An amended version of the bill, which Biden voted in favor of, also made federal marijuana laws more punitive by reducing “from 100 to 50 the number of marihuana plants needed to qualify for specified penalties” and stipulated that people convicted of three felony drug charges should handed a sentence of life imprisonment without release.

Additionally, the bill would have increased penalties for the use of a controlled substance in public housing, expanded the definition of “drug paraphernalia” under the CSA to include things like scales and syringes and prohibited the advertisement of Schedule I drugs such as cannabis.

In 1993, Biden filed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a bill that would have required the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to establish a drug testing program for federal offenders on “post-conviction release.”

It also would’ve increased penalties for those convicted of drug distribution in “drug-free” zones and ban advertising “which aims to illegally solicit or sell drugs.”

...In 2003, Biden sponsored a bill to amend the CSA to “prohibit knowingly leasing, renting, or using, or intentionally profiting from, any place…whether permanently or temporarily, for the purpose of manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.” The Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, which later became the Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, has been blamed for making festivals and music events where drugs like MDMA are taken less safe by discouraging operators from providing on-site harm reduction services out of fear they’d be prosecuted for knowingly allowing drug use. He cosponsored a later version as well.

Biden also cosponsored a number of controversial anti-drug bills filed by other lawmakers during his time in the Senate.

He signed on as the lead Democratic cosponsor of Thurmond’s Criminal Code Reform Act in 1981. The bill would have increased penalties for trafficking in drugs including “large amounts” of marijuana. The next year, Biden also appeared as the lead Democratic cosponsor of Thurmond’s Violent Crime and Drug Enforcement Improvements Act, which would have expanded federal asset forfeiture authorities, made it so juveniles can be transferred to adult court for certain violent or drug-related crimes and established a new office to “plan and coordinate drug enforcement efforts” for the federal government.

Another Thurmond bill that Biden signed on to in 1983 proposed expanding federal asset forfeiture authorities.

In 1998, as states began making moves to allow medical cannabis, the senator cosponsored a resolution “in support of the existing Federal legal process for determining the safety and efficacy of drugs, including marijuana and other Schedule I drugs, for medicinal use.”

“Congress continues to support the existing Federal legal process for determining the safety and efficacy of drugs and opposes efforts to circumvent this process by legalizing marijuana, and other Schedule I drugs, for medicinal use without valid scientific evidence and the approval of the Food and Drug Administration,” the resolution states. It also expressed concerns about “ambiguous cultural messages about marijuana use are contributing to a growing acceptance of marijuana use among children and teenagers” and voiced support for federal authorities enforcing prohibition “through seizure and other civil action, as well as through criminal penalties.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chief sponsor of the resolution, described it this way: “Our resolution addresses the effort by the drug legalization lobby in this country to get marijuana and other dangerous drugs on the streets, in our homes, and in our schools. These groups have been trying to do this for years. Sadly, they have been somewhat successful.”

Biden was an original cosponsor of another infamous drug-related bill, the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The House version, which he voted in favor of, was ultimately signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It’s best known for creating sentencing disparities for crack versus powder cocaine; it imposed a 1:100 crack to power cocaine ratio, whereby one gram of crack was equivalent to 100 grams of powder cocaine under the law. The provision led to significant racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

...In a 1974 article from The Washingtonian, the senator-- at that point 31-years-old, making him the youngest member of the Senate-- tried to distance himself from being identified as liberal. While he argued he was progressive on “civil rights and civil liberties,” he said “when it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother.”

“I don’t think marijuana should be legalized,” he said.

About three and a half decades later, in 2010, the then-vice president said, “I still believe it’s a gateway drug. I’ve spent a lot of my life as chairman of the Judiciary Committee dealing with this. I think it would be a mistake to legalize.”

“The punishment should fit the crime,” he said. “But I think legalization is a mistake.”

...Throughout his own time in the White House as vice president, Biden consistently took an opposing stance on marijuana reform proposals. He said in 2012 that he had “serious doubts that decriminalization would have a major impact on the earnings of violent criminal organizations, given that these organizations have diversified into criminal activities beyond drug trafficking,” for example.

During a trip to Mexico, Biden discouraged Latin American countries from legalizing marijuana, arguing that while he understood their interest in pursuing alternative approaches to curb prohibition-related violence, the pros of legalization were outweighed by the cons.

...In 2007, Biden defended his vote in favor of additional border wall fencing by peddling a myth that has since been echoed repeatedly by President Donald Trump, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he “voted for the fence related to drugs.”

“A fence will stop 20 kilos of cocaine coming through that fence. It will not stop someone climbing over it or around it,” Biden said, despite the fact that the vast majority of drug smuggling occurs at legal ports of entry. “And it is designed not just to deal with illegals, it’s designed with a serious drug trafficking problem we have.”

Asked in 2016 whether he regretted promoting the 1994 crime legislation, Biden said “not at all.”

...But by January 2019, as Biden was gearing up for a presidential run, he seemed less bullish about defending his role in shaping the criminal justice world that emerged out of the 1990s.

“I haven’t always been right,” he said. “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.”

He added that sentencing disparities for crack and cocaine “trapped an entire generation” and added the the legislation “was a big mistake when it was made.”

Biden's crimes against our communities were so long ago that he should be forgiven now? Sick! Bernie denounced Biden's catastrophic crime bill in 1994 on the floor of the House of Representatives. No prominent Democratic politician today has done more to harm African-American communities than Joe Biden, though many black Democrats-- and white Democrats-- think Biden didn't exist before Obama embraced him and made him vice president. This video is from a quarter century ago, when Biden was already firmly established as one of the four or five very worst Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Today in his 7th bid for the presidency, Biden is trying to escape the consequences of his long, sordid record. Trump will be howling about it daily if Biden gets the nomination.




EJ Dickson, writing for Rolling Stone warned stoners that "when it comes to marijuana legalization, Biden is basically the worst candidate in the race. Biden is better than Trump. That's it; that's basically the only positive thing I can say about it. And I've been following his career for 4 decades. By now, you have probably guessed marijuana legalization activists are about as enthusiastic about him as I am.

In a statement sent to Rolling Stone, Erik Altieri, the executive director of the marijuana reform organization NORML, criticized Biden for his “abysmal record when it comes to marijuana law reform, ending our failed war on drugs, and addressing mass incarceration.” “Biden’s views are far out of step with the American public and he holds the worst record on cannabis related policy of any individual currently running for the Democratic or Republican nomination,” Altieri said.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mason Tvert, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, agreed, stating that Biden “has historically been one of the most aggressive drug warriors in Congress” and does not appear to have reversed or even softened his stance on marijuana, despite the majority of the Democratic candidates vocalizing their support for legalization. “He‘s very out of touch on this subject compared to other candidates,” Tvert says. “Quite frankly, he seems to be a bit more out of step on this issue than President Trump,” who has reportedly said that he would sign legislation ensuring states have the right to determine whether or not to legalize marijuana.

...Literally for decades, Biden has asserted his opposition to marijuana legalization. As early as 1974, the then-31-year-old senator was making a case for his career-long brand as a dyed-in-the-wool centrist, claiming that “when it comes to abortion, amnesty and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother,” specifically citing his belief that he did not believe marijuana should be legalized. (Again, this was in 1974.) He has maintained this position throughout his career, though, voicing the long-debunked theory in 2010 that marijuana served as a “gateway drug” to other illicit substances. In 2014, he doubled down on this belief, firmly telling a Time magazine interviewer that he did not support marijuana legalization, though he did note that “the idea of focusing significant resources on interdicting or convicting people for smoking marijuana is a waste of our resources.”

Biden has also voiced his opposition to marijuana as a form of pain management. In 2007, he said that while he supported ending raids on medical marijuana users, he believed that “there’s got to be a better answer than marijuana. There’s got to be a better answer than that. There’s got to be a better way for a humane society to figure out how to deal with that problem.”

...As of now, it’s a bit unclear: Biden has not issued many public statements on marijuana policy reform in the past few years, and as of his now his campaign website doesn’t make any specific reference to his current drug policy views. It does, however, make veiled references to drug policy reform by stating that Biden advocates for “reform[ing] the criminal justice system to prioritize prevention, eliminate racial disparities at every stage, get rid of sentencing practices that don’t fit the crime, and help make sure formerly incarcerated individuals who have served their sentences are able to fully participate in our democracy and economy.”

To be fair to Biden, it seems he has reversed some of his hard-line drug policy stances: he has said he opposes mandatory minimum sentencing, and in 2007 he also introduced legislation meant to counteract the racial disparities in sentencing for crack versus cocaine possession (a law that, again, he was instrumental in ushering in). “The school of thought was that we had to do everything we could to dissuade the use of crack cocaine. And so I am part of the problem that I have been trying to solve since then, because I think the disparity is way out of line,” he said by way of an apology in a 2008 Senate hearing.

But given the increasing support for marijuana law reform in particular (according to one 2018 Gallup poll, nearly 66% of Americans support legalization), Tvert believes that if Biden is to stand a chance against other Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (who have been vocal in their support of legalization), he’s going to have to publicly atone for his drug warrior past and soften his views on cannabis. “A lot of Democrats are looking forward and trying not to maintain someone with old failed policies and this is a perfect example,” he says, adding, “the folks [Biden] needs to energize are most likely the ones he thinks should be treated like criminals for using marijuana.”

Joe Biden is the opposite of a leader. If he changes his mind-- or claims to have-- it's because of polling and focus group testing and he will change his mind back and forth with the winds of public opinion. If you're thinking of backing this guy in the primary, you're out of your mind... or whatever you're smoking is too strong for your tolerance.