[dragonwriter]

> Congress has been using their power of the purse to forbid using Federal dollars to prosecute those in states where pot is legal every year since 2014.

No, they prohibit prosecuting use consistent with state medical use laws; in both 2019 and 2020 the House voted to extend that to state-legal use generally, but the Senate didn’t go along. (The House, but not the Senate, also passed a decriminalization bill in 2020.)

[GeekyBear]

I seem to remember the Trump DOJ threatening to renew prosecutions and members of Congress making it clear that they would expand the prosecution ban if they had to.

They are perfectly willing to make pot legal, however, they prefer to avoid looking like they are doing so as long as possible.

Biden's open opposition is the bigger issue here. Lets not forget who was behind a lot of the drug war legislation.

>Biden was a major Democratic leader in spearheading America’s war on drugs during the 1980s and ’90s.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/25/18282870/j...

[dragonwriter]

> I seem to remember the Trump DOJ threatening to renew prosecutions and members of Congress making it clear that they would expand the prosecution ban if they had to.

If its not “sufficient numbers of Republican members of the Senate to force McConnell to actually allow it on the floor”—and it wasn’t—it was an empty threat; the House actually passed an expanded prosecution ban twice and a general decriminalization, none of those made it into any bill on the Senate floor.

> Biden's open opposition is the bigger issue here.

Not really, Biden publicly supports legalization of medical marijuana, decriminalization, rescheduling, permitting state choice on legalization, and automatic record expungement. This differs from federal legalization substantively only in that there would be federal backup for states that choose not to legalize, and has not openly opposed (or supported) the stronger legalization proposals now being announced by, among others, much of the Democratic Senate leadership.

The only meaningful barrier to something very close to full legalization is support in the Senate, mainly the potential of a filibuster, but there’s a couple uncertain D votes (like Manchin) that could prevent even a bare majority.

The President and the majority of the Democratic caucus have different positions, but not far enough apart to be a real barrier to lawmaking.

> Biden was a major Democratic leader in spearheading America’s war on drugs during the 1980s and ’90s.

Yeah, but its not the 80s and 90s; its the 2020s, and Biden has a very different position today.

[GeekyBear]

You seem to be discussing a different Biden than the one we have.

>This month, something unusual happened: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took a stand against President Joe Biden.

The New York Democrat, typically a strong Biden ally, has transformed into one of the Senate’s biggest advocates for marijuana legalization, which Biden continues to oppose. But Schumer said he’ll move forward with his legalization bill anyway.

...based on his public remarks, [Biden] seems genuinely conservative on the issue — arguing only for decriminalization (in which the threat of jail or prison time is removed for possession, but sales remain illegal), and calling for “more scientific investigations” into the issue, particularly whether pot is a “gateway drug.”

Biden, after all, not just supported but spearheaded many of the country’s current drug war policies. During the 1980s and ’90s, he backed and helped write bill after bill that toughened federal criminal penalties against all sorts of drugs. Biden has since admitted to going too far in at least some respects, but this is where he built his early political career.

https://www.vox.com/22387746/biden-marijuana-weed-legalizati...

[dragonwriter]

> You seem to be discussing a different Biden than the one we have.

No, I’m discussing the actual one we have, and the actual concrete positions he has taken, starting in the campaign, and reiterated yesterday by his press secretary.

You, on the other hand, are relying on a heavily-spun media conflict narrative that does not accurately portray the positions he has taken (claiming he supports “only decriminalization” when he supports all of general federal decriminalization of marijuana and federal legalization of medical marijuana and federal law giving states the freedom to choose legalization and rescheduling marijuana to schedule II federally and automatically expunging federal criminal records associated with marijuana.)

[GeekyBear]

Sorry, but Vox is not fake news, and you cannot spin decriminalization into full legalization.

My point remains.

Biden is a larger obstacle to full legalization than Congress.

[dragonwriter]

> Sorry, but Vox is not fake news,

I didn’t say “Vox is fake news”.

I said that article youn cited is misleading and distorts the facts to push an exaggerated conflict narrative.

> you cannot spin decriminalization into full legalization.

Well, I mean I could, it would be no harder than spinning medical legalization plus federally-protected state-choice legalization plus rescheduling plus decriminilization plus automatic criminal record expungement as “only decriminalization”.

But I didn’t. I did point out that the only practical difference between what Biden advocates ans what Schumer, et al., advocate is that the shrinking number of states that don’t choose liberalization woild have federal support for their internal policy. Which, while a significant difference, isn’t a wife enough gap in preferrred policy to stop a bill from being passed somewhere in the space, inclusive, between the two endpoints, largely dependent on where the support is in Congress. Whichever side doesn’t get what they most prefer (which might be both) would no doubt paint it as imperfect, but that's different than blocking it.

What is a real barrier is votes in the Senate, where Democrats certainly have most of their caucus but jave a couple wildcards, but very lolely don’t have the Republican votes to clear a filibuster even if they can reach a majority (and definitely don’t, unless Manchin can be broken down, have the votes to reform thr cloture rule to make the filibuster less of a barrier.)