John Fetterman to Biden: Decriminalize marijuana

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov John Fetterman is pressing President Joe Biden to decriminalize marijuana ahead of Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh on Labor Day.

Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate, made the call Monday after being asked if he would appear with Biden at the annual Labor Day parade. Fetterman’s campaign said he’s looking forward to seeing Biden there and speaking to him about cannabis decriminalization.

“The president needs to use his executive authority to begin descheduling marijuana, I would love to see him do this prior to his visit to Pittsburgh,” Fetterman said on Twitter. “This is just common sense and Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly support decriminalizing marijuana.”

Some Democratic candidates have tried to put some distance between themselves and Biden ahead of the midterm elections, wary of Biden’s sluggish approval ratings. Fetterman is taking a different approach: using Biden’s appearance to put the focus on a policy he’s pushed for since he became lieutenant governor.

Fetterman has been a longtime advocate for marijuana legalization. He did a legalization tour of the state when he took office and has made it a prominent part of his Senate campaign.

He’s also tried to run a campaign largely independent of the Democratic establishment, despite his role as the No. 2 official in state government. He didn’t appear with Biden at a Wilkes-Barre event Tuesday, nor will he attend a prime-time speech the president is delivering Thursday in Philadelphia. As he returns to the campaign trail after a months-long absence recovering from a stroke, Fetterman has mostly campaigned in some of the most conservative parts of the state.

Highlighting marijuana decriminalization allows Fetterman to run on a policy supported by most Pennsylvanians in polls — and to draw a contrast between himself and Biden. Biden previously opposed fully legalizing marijuana but shifted toward supporting decriminalization during his 2020 presidential campaign.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that Biden “supports leaving decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the states, rescheduling cannabis as a Schedule 2 drug so researchers can study its positive and negative impacts.”

She said Biden also supports decriminalizing marijuana use and automatically expunging prior criminal records related to marijuana. Biden granted clemency in April to more than 70 people convicted of marijuana crimes.

But the Biden administration has not moved on changing the drug’s federal classification.

Fetterman’s Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, has slammed Fetterman’s record on criminal justice reform.

“Marijuana and freeing murderers — exactly what you’d expect from a man-child cobbling together policies through a haze of smoke in his parents’ basement,” Rachel Tripp, an Oz spokesperson, said Monday on Twitter.

Fetterman pushed back.

“I don’t want to hear any bull— coming out of Dr. Oz’s campaign trying to conflate decriminalizing marijuana with seriously harmful crime,” he said in a statement. “Are we supposed to believe that neither he nor any members of his staff have ever used marijuana? ... I know firsthand what real crime looks like. Marijuana does not fit the bill.”

Oz said this spring that he doesn’t support marijuana legalization.

“I don’t want to breed addiction to marijuana,” he said on Newsmax in May. “It’s not physical addiction, it’s emotional addiction. We need to get Pennsylvanians back at work. We’ve gotta give them their mojo and I don’t want marijuana to be a hindrance to that. I also don’t want people operating heavy machinery and driving by me when they’ve taken their fourth joint of the day.”

Randal Meyer, executive director of the Global Alliance for Cannabis Commerce, a trade organization that represents the cannabis industry, said Fetterman is one of several candidates — across political parties — to call for marijuana legalization in recent years.

Nationally, about 1,000 people are still incarcerated each year for cannabis use on federal land, Meyer said. And tens of thousands are incarcerated at the state level.

» READ MORE: John Fetterman ran the Board of Pardons like an activist — and at times a bully

While attempts to decriminalize and regulate the drug federally haven’t moved through the Senate, the debate in Congress has largely shifted from whether to legalize cannabis to trying to find the proper role of the federal government from a public health and regulatory perspective.

“It is something that is coming up more and more in these election cycles because it is an extraordinarily outdated policy that frustrates people across the political spectrum,” Meyer said. “From patients in Florida of the older generation, to baby boomers increasingly liking this to young patients suffering from different disorders.”

Oz’s campaign on Tuesday launched a satirical “inmates for Fetterman” campaign to draw attention to Fetterman’s support for clemency as chair of the Board of Pardons. Fetterman’s campaign, meanwhile, released a new TV ad highlighting his time as mayor of Braddock, in which Fetterman says he “did whatever it took to fund our police.”