Felix Balderas 
EDINBURG – On October 6th, President Biden issued a presidential proclamation that pardoned federal convictions for simple marijuana possession offenses. This action is expected to affect thousands of people incarcerated for simple marijuana possession according to a White House News Release.
Attorney Sergio Sanchez from ‘The Sanchez Law Firm’ in Edinburg defines simple marijuana possession as a small quantity or personal use on an average person basis. Sanchez continued to explain the reality behind the real effect of these pardons.
“It didn’t get anybody out of prison, there was not one person that was walked out from prison after this pardon. These are pardons that happened after a sentence was complete[…]it did wipe away a conviction of simple possession conviction,” said Sanchez on the pardon.
Natasha Altema McNeely, associate professor of political science, spoke about the political implications of this pardon.
“There’s this troubling trend that we are seeing at the state level and what I suspect especially among republican governors is that their statement and response is no, including the governor of Texas,” said McNeely.
She also mentioned that she had seen a previous report in January of 2022 that Texas Governor Greg Abbott had made a statement where he indicated that jail was for violent offenders and not necessarily for people who’d been punished for simple marijuana possession. McNeely continued to say that would then imply that he would be supportive of this Biden pardon, but him choosing not to is very much complimentary to his position with the Biden administration.
“He is trying to pander to his hardcore base of support just to confirm that they will continue to support him in a few weeks,” said McNeely regarding Abbott’s decision to reject the pardon.
Associate Professor of Political Science Charles Olney voiced his initial response to first hearing about Biden’s presidential proclamation.
“The numbers that I’ve seen are around 6,500 in terms of people who are serving federal sentences of some kind, so that could be a limitation of time that they serve, it could change the conditions of their parole and applications and things like that, voting rights are often taken from people based on felony convictions, this could potentially affect that. In terms of the number of people that this will affect is actually quite small because the federal government is not the agent that is tasked with this kind of law enforcement.” said who?
According to a White House News Release, there are thousands of people with prior federal convictions for marijuana possession. This pardon will help relieve collateral consequences and may create new opportunities for those people in housing, employment, or education.
In the coming weeks, we will be able to see if this simple marijuana pardon will affect the Texas governor’s midterm election and whether this was more of symbolic or substantive action.
