By Holly Werris
WASHINGTON, DC – Nearly 40 organizations have called on President Joe Biden to fulfill his campaign promise and decriminalize marijuana.
Recalling his earlier statements, the Marijuana Justice Coalition (MJC) and Cannabis Freedom Alliance (CFA) wrote a letter to the president asking him to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
The CSA, first passed in 1970, consists of five schedules ranking drugs based on their potential for abuse, addiction, and medical use. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I 
drug, the most stringent and dangerous schedule which is for substances that are easily abused, highly addictive, and have no accepted medical use.
The process of rescheduling marijuana under the CSA began last year and has become a bipartisan effort for the Coalition and Alliance.
The letter reminded Biden that in 2021, 250,000 people were arrested on marijuana-based charges according to FBI data, and Black people are three times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana, despite all races offending at similar rates,
The consequences for incarceration are steep, including large fines and prison time. Following a conviction, MJC and CFA write, people face employment, education, and housing barriers, the letter noted, even though marijuana is currently regulated in 48 of the states.
“In our federal system, these laboratories of democracy should not be impeded in their development of effective measures to ensure public safety and promote public health,” the letter said, adding, “Any action to move marijuana to another CSA schedule rather than removing it would simply maintain federal criminalization of these programs, licensed companies and individuals operating in a fully legal manner under existing state rules and regulation.”
Simply rescheduling marijuana would not reflect the will of the public majority, which supports decriminalization, MJC and CFA told Biden.
“Now is the time to end federal marijuana criminalization, Mr. President,” the letter urges, “not rebrand it.”
