Mike Tyson urges Biden to free thousands locked up over cannabis: ‘Right these wrongs’

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson has urged Joe Biden to continue his policies stake to “correct our country’s botched approach to marijuana” and extend clemency to the thousands of nonviolent cannabis offenders still languishing in federal lockups.

“President Biden has the power to create real change – he can right these wrongs and grant clemency to those in prison for cannabis crimes,” Tyson told the Guardian. “We know that the failed war on drugs was wrong and that no one should be in jail for cannabis. It’s time for our country to move forward and end cannabis prohibition once and for all.”

Legal cannabis sales in the US could soon reach $40 billion annually. And campaigners say it is unfair more than 2,000 people – predominantly people of color – are in federal prisons and have been convicted of behavior that is now legal in nearly half the country, while recreational cannabis is legal in 24 states.

About 30,000 more are in state prisons for non-violent cannabis offenses, activists say, with patchy data. Biden does not have the power to pardon these offenders, but Tyson implored the president to pressure those states to do so.

Biden has been accused of misleading voters in his messaging about his pardons for people convicted of simple marijuana possession offenses, in line with his campaign promise to decriminalize cannabis.

“No one should be in jail simply for using or possessing marijuana,” he said in October 2022. But nine months earlier, “not a single offender convicted solely of simple possession of marijuana remained in Federal Bureau of Investigation custody.” . of prisons†, according to to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. (Those who remain in prison face charges including drug trafficking.)

In a video for Reeform, a campaigning cannabis brand founded by Weldon Angelos, who served a 13-year prison sentence for selling cannabis worth less than $1,000 before being granted clemency in 2016, Tyson said he didn’t believe people could do anything were doing. ‘Time for killers’ to traffic in ‘mild medicine’.

The White House will receive a letter Tuesday from Tyson, a cannabis advocate and entrepreneur, saying it is high time authorities reconcile with the communities, including poor people and people of color, who bear the heavy costs of the U.S. have paid. There is talk of a so-called drug war.

Even for those who sold cannabis and are now free, their criminal records often pose a serious barrier to finding work.

“The war on marijuana is over, Mr. President, as evidenced by legalization efforts across the country in polls showing that most Americans are against marijuana prohibition,” Tyson wrote in the letter to Biden. “Through a categorical pardon, you can end federal warfare against our own people and usher in a new era based on peace and prosperity.”

Tyson’s letter comes after rappers Drake, Killer Mike and a host of other chart-topping artists told Biden in a letter in 2021: “Enough is enough. No one should be incarcerated in federal prison for non-violent marijuana crimes.â€

In 2019, Jerry Haymon, a former college football player, was federally sentenced to 10 years for distributing large quantities of cannabis, despite the fact that his home state of California had legalized medical cannabis in 1996. The state approved recreational sales in 2016.

“I am loyal and enjoy helping those in need,” he wrote in an online biography. “Before this confinement… I had graduated (university) and was starting up a pharmacy. I am a man of God – and most importantly, I am a kind-hearted person.â€

Danny Trevino of Michigan, another state that has legalized recreational cannabis, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2019. “Another Mexican goes to jail and leaves his little girl behind,” said his mother, Berta Garcia, previously said of his three-year-old daughter. “This is so unfair.”

In November, rapper Ralo – born Terrell Davis – was released after five years in federal prison for more than $1 million worth of cannabis that police found on his plane in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia decriminalized the possession of small amounts of cannabis in 2017.

Luke Scarmazzo became the last known Californian to be released from prison on federal cannabis trafficking charges in February 2023, after serving nearly 15 years for running a licensed medical cannabis dispensary that allegedly sold to patients without a prescription.

“It didn’t feel like we were wrongly convicted, but it felt like it was unfair, not just because of the amount of time we got for a first drug offense,” Scarmazzo said. CBS.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has long maintained that cannabis is one of the most addictive and dangerous drugs and has no medical value, despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary. A top adviser to Richard Nixon, the president who first placed cannabis in the most restrictive drug scheduling category, previously admitted: “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.â€

The DEA has reviewed cannabis’ status as a Schedule I drug, similar to heroin, after the Department of Health recommended moving its classification to the lowest category.