Joe Biden courts youth vote with move to reclassify marijuana
US president Joe Biden may eventually ban TikTok, but he is moving to give something back to the young people who dominate the popular social media app – a looser federal grip on marijuana.
Facing softening support from a left-leaning voting group that will be crucial to his re-election hopes in November, Mr Biden has made a number of election year moves intended to appeal in particular to younger voters.
His move toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug is just the latest, coming weeks after he cancelled student loans for another 206,000 borrowers. He has also made abortion rights central to his case for re-election.
The push to highlight issues that resonate with younger voters comes as the Democratic president fights to hold together the coalition that sent him to the White House in 2020.
Mr Biden, the oldest president in US history at 81, is battling a perception among voters that he has lost a step as he has aged. Discontent with his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has exploded into unrest on college campuses.
A proposal by the US Drug Enforcement Administration would recognise the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalise marijuana outright for recreational use.
Mr Biden called for a review of federal marijuana law in October 2022 and moved to pardon thousands of Americans convicted federally of simple possession of the drug. He has also called on governors and local leaders to take similar steps to erase marijuana convictions.
“The American people have made clear in state after state that cannabis legalisation is inevitable,” Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat and an early proponent of easing marijuana laws, said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration is listening.”
“Sending people to prison just for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives,” Mr Biden posted on X. “It’s time that we right these wrongs.”
The politics of marijuana are favourable for the president.
According to AP VoteCast, 63pc of voters nationally in the 2022 midterm elections said they favour legalising recreational use of marijuana nationwide, compared with 36pc who said they were opposed.
Support for legalisation was higher among adults under age 45, 73pc of whom were in favour. About four-fifths of Democrats, roughly two-thirds of independents and about half of Republicans were in favour.
Mr Biden has issued pardons to thousands of people for federal marijuana possession and commuted long sentences handed down for non-violent drug offenses.
While young voters lean left, they are also less likely to vote. Mr Biden can’t afford for a reliable group of supporters to stay home or vote for a third-party candidate like independent Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is aggressively courting young voters, or the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
Get ahead of the day with the morning headlines at 7.30am and Fionnán Sheahan’s exclusive take on the day’s news every afternoon, with our free daily newsletter.