“If we are able to make any progress at this time—whether or not by laws or government motion—we should seize that chance to maneuver ahead towards a post-prohibition method to federal hashish regulation.”
By Weldon Angelos
Tuesday will probably be a historic day within the U.S. Senate. Members of a key subcommittee have invited me to testify at a listening to on hashish reform and the harms of criminalization—a first-of-its-kind assembly in a chamber the place marijuana coverage and the lifelong penalties of prohibition have been swept below the rug for much too lengthy.
My message to the panel will probably be easy: My identify is Weldon Angelos, and I’m residing proof of the advantages of second probabilities. However I’m removed from the one individual deserving of reduction. I plan to remind members that inaction will solely proceed to breed injustice, and there’s no extra time to waste.
The subject of the listening to—the critically essential challenge of federal hashish decriminalization—impacts the lives of hundreds of thousands of Individuals, from those that have interacted with the felony justice system, to sufferers and veterans who get reduction from hashish.
I’m grateful to the subcommittee chairman, Senator Booker, in addition to Senator Lee for his or her ongoing dedication to my trigger and to my case. With out their assist, I’d nonetheless be serving time in federal jail.
After I was 23 years previous, I used to be working within the music trade as a producer for artists like Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur’s recording group. It was my dream job. Along with my music profession, I used to be additionally promoting small quantities of hashish on the facet to assist pay the payments till my music ventures stabilized. Sadly, my connections to the music trade—and to hip-hop specifically—made me the right goal for regulation enforcement.
After promoting $300 value of hashish to a confidential informant on three events, I used to be arrested, tried, and convicted on 16 federal counts, essentially the most critical of which included harsh necessary punishments. The related statute, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), punished the mix of any quantity of hashish and a lawfully possessed firearm. It didn’t matter that the drug was a small quantity of hashish; it didn’t matter that possession and possession of the firearm was in any other case authorized below state regulation; and it didn’t matter that the firearm wasn’t brandished or used. In actual fact, a defendant will be convicted for having hashish and authorized weapons in his or her own residence. In my case, all these issues utilized with a vengeance.
For me, the outcome was a 55-year necessary minimal sentence—a punishment that even the choose who sentenced me, a conservative George W. Bush appointee named Paul Cassell, known as “merciless, unjust, and even irrational,” and a case “the place the system has malfunctioned.”
In 2016, due to the assistance and unrelenting advocacy of my household, bipartisan elected officers, the media, outstanding celebrities, and even the person who prosecuted me, I used to be lastly launched below President Obama’s administration after serving 13 years for a hashish offense. In 2020, I used to be absolutely pardoned by President Trump.
Now that I’m not incarcerated, I’ve devoted my life to ending hashish prohibition and mass incarceration.
Since my launch, I’ve devoted my life to felony justice reform advocacy, engaged on hashish clemency points with a number of presidential administrations, and serving to cross the bipartisan First Step Act. I based the Weldon Project, a non-profit group that works to safe the discharge of these serving time for cannabis-related offenses and to create pathways to pardons and expungement of data in order that these impacted might go on to reside significant lives.
Picture courtesy of Weldon Angelos.
Nationwide hashish reform should embody: (1) the discharge of federal hashish offenders; (2) a real expungement and sealing of data; and (3) the creation of significant alternatives for the previously incarcerated upon launch.
With a complete method to hashish reform, we might instantly help lots of the almost 3,000 folks serving federal jail time for hashish offenses, in addition to the tens of 1000’s of people whose lives and futures are haunted by data of hashish arrests, convictions, and sentences. Additional nonetheless, Congress should present the sources to deal with state-level hashish arrests, convictions, and sentences, since every year lots of of 1000’s of people turn into entangled in state felony justice methods regardless of hashish being authorized in some kind in 37 states, three U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.
This is the reason I used to be excited and grateful to see the Hashish Administration and Alternative Act launched final week. This invoice would deschedule hashish, serving to to finish the dangerous felony justice impacts of prohibition and supporting the expungement and resentencing of hashish convictions, all whereas permitting states the suitable to determine the path their jurisdiction will take.
Congress should additionally handle the residual results of hashish convictions. These with felony convictions will be politically disenfranchised, shedding the suitable to vote or to serve on juries, for example. They lose different civil liberties like the suitable to own a firearm legally, in addition to lawful alternatives afforded to others in training and in public housing, amongst different issues. Hashish convictions adversely affect credit score scores too, and so they can impede or completely forestall employment, creating everlasting limitations to true participation in society.
Even with a full presidential pardon, I nonetheless really feel the stranglehold of my hashish conviction.
In my house state of Utah, my prior conviction bars me from collaborating within the state’s authorized medical hashish trade. The state refuses to challenge licenses to people with felony hashish convictions, even with a full presidential pardon. In California—the opposite state I name house—my felony historical past prevents me from accessing credit score, capital, and financing regardless of having engaged in conduct that’s now authorized all through the jurisdiction.
Consequently, I’ve been successfully shut out of a whole authorized trade that’s purported to be one of the equitable within the nation.
As additional testomony to the significance of fully clearing a document, this previous spring I attended a gathering with senior employees of the Biden Administration. Regardless of almost a dozen earlier White Home admissions and being invited by the President, I used to be virtually prevented from getting into due to a latent felony document—for conduct that has been completely pardoned— however nonetheless lingered within the Secret Service background test.
That I used to be almost barred from a dialogue with presidential advisors about felony justice reform and the consequences of hashish convictions due to a hashish conviction that had been presidentially pardoned can be humorous if it weren’t true. However it’s ironic and poignantly merciless.
I’m hopeful, nevertheless, due to the Senate subcommittee’s consideration of the Hashish Administration and Alternative Act. The invoice and its expungement provisions may very well be life-changing for people incarcerated within the federal jail system for hashish offenses. However I warning towards complacency. We’re in what my good friend and co-author Professor Erik Luna has known as the “twilight of marijuana prohibition,” and folks’s lives stay at stake. If we are able to make any progress at this time—whether or not by laws or government motion—we should seize that chance to maneuver ahead towards a post-prohibition method to federal hashish regulation.
Every day in incarceration severely impacts the psychological and bodily well being of incarcerated people, and negatively impacts their relationships with the surface world. And every arrest, prosecution, conviction, and sentence makes the world a bit of bit smaller for many who should reside their lives bearing the fashionable scarlet letter.
I notice that I’m one of many fortunate ones. I’m not inmate 10053-081. I’m Weldon Angelos, a reform advocate with the immense privilege of being invited to testify earlier than a Senate panel.
However my fortune isn’t common. I’m reminded of all these left behind in jail—those that are nonetheless serving unjust sentences—lots of whom are Black and Hispanic women and men who proceed to serve time whereas predominantly white CEOs and entrepreneurs make hundreds of thousands from the leisure and medical hashish industries across the nation. The hashish trade ought to be capable of develop and thrive, however not on the expense of those that are nonetheless incarcerated.
And as we take into consideration federal hashish reform and make sure the launch of those that are nonetheless serving, we should additionally present alternatives and sources to help reentry and create a pathway to expungement to cease the collateral penalties.
I strongly imagine we are able to construct on the bipartisan success of felony justice reforms just like the First Step Act and might work to finish the racially motivated hashish insurance policies which have endured for too many a long time.
Congress has the chance and the duty to proper these historic wrongs and exchange the punitive insurance policies of the previous with laws that acknowledges the crucial have to restore a long time of systemic hurt. I hope that my testimony will assist transfer this challenge ahead. I hope my phrases hit house for senators and assist underscore that this isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about doing what’s proper, what’s frequent sense, and what works.
Weldon Angelos is felony justice reform advocate and founding father of The Weldon Venture, a non-profit group dedicated to securing reduction for people who find themselves incarcerated over hashish. He obtained a presidential pardon for his personal federal marijuana conviction in 2020 after serving 13 years in jail.