Roughly 6500 people with convictions for possession of marijuana will be exonerated as President Joe Biden today announced pardons at the federal level.
As mid-term elections draw near, President Biden issued the historic statement today while also calling on states to follow through with his pardons.
"Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit," said Biden.
While stopping short of issuing federal mandates, Biden also said that individual states should follow.
"Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either," said Biden.
Currently, marijuana is completely legal in 19 out of 50 states and medically legal in 37 states. While there have been considerable efforts to total country-wide reform, a complete change of federal and state level chance still faces many obstacles. In fact, much of where the U.S. stands today in its complex legal stance comes from President Biden's own three-strikes crime rule that he pushed into law in 1994.
President Biden making reforms at the federal level, however does pave significant inroads for nationwide changes, such as banking support and marijuana businesses to participate on major stock exchanges, which would foreign investments and business expansion.
Currently, marijuana falls under the same federal classification as drugs such as heroin, despite marijuana being heralded by the scientific medical community as a boon to people suffering from chronic conditions such as pain and more serious medical ailments like cancer.
"We classify marijuana at the same level as heroin and more serious than fentanyl. It makes no sense," said Biden.
With Biden's announcement, shares in marijuana companies jumped an average of 20 percent.