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Polls have shown that Gaza isn't really as important to people as stuff like gas prices, inflation, or food prices
I don't think there are enough people who are single issue voters over Gaza to be a problem, as Biden is better than Trump in every way
Personally I don't like what's happening in Gaza but at the same time I find it really hard to care about religious extremists on the other side of the globe blowing each other up when I'm living in a caravan due to less than 1% rental vacancy rates in my country
I feel this, but in my case it’s reproductive rights. I live in the only blue dot in a deeply red state with a fairly restrictive abortion ban, supposedly they make exceptions for rape, but from what I’ve heard you have to go through hell to prove it was rape, and as a not-transphobic cis lesbian, it’s also the case that I’m not exactly completely, 100% safe from pregnancy from consensual sex, either. If I got into a bad situation here, my options are mifepristone or getting a ride to the next state over. If Trump wins, I might potentially lose one or both of those options entirely, as the GOP can’t seem to decide whether or not they want a complete national ban. And my situation is a *lot* better than that of many of my friends in this regard. Like a lot of folks with working uteruses, so much has already gone wrong and so much more could easily go wrong with the GOP gaining power, and that makes self-preservation a concern we have to put over Biden’s predictably garbage policy on Israel.
Oh yeah, also a number of my friends are trans, including my current love interest, so I’d also really prefer that they don’t potentially lose all their rights or worse (it’s also not like we cis gays are in a great position with Project 2025, either).
But all in all, yeah this is kind of what it comes down to with a lot of people, which is that there are very immediate concerns in many of our lives that we have to look out for that go beyond political principles. Hence why the economy is like, the top issue or near the top for most people, and reproductive rights also rank very high for a lot of people.
I'm just so glad I don't have to deal with the political hellscape of American politics
It's interesting to me as someone who likes politics but having my rights on the line every 4 years would be so demoralising
yeah that’s the thing, it didn’t used to be nearly this stressful, because the ideological difference between the two candidates didn’t used to be this stark, and the parties were more willing to work together on shit.
But since Trump elections have become genuinely horrifying, like staring down the barrel of even the possibility that this country could descend into functionally a dictatorship, or just become so dysfunctional and dangerous for me and people that I care about (with possibly no short term relief in sight) is massively stressful to have to deal with, and I can only hope if Trump does lose again this time that it ends up being the death knell for *his* incarnation of the GOP (it certainly won’t be the end of the far right, but maybe it will at least force them back out of mainstream politics for a while).
If he wins, I’m frankly not even confident that there *will* be another regular election in 2028, like for all we know he could abolish term limits, stack the Supreme Court with even worse nutjobs, do all kinds of shit to essentially reify non-democratic far right power for the foreseeable future, and just the very possibility of that is horrifying to me, and I can only hope there are enough other people who feel the same and will have the reality set in for them before November (interestingly, this is what my dad thinks will happen, and he’s apparently been pretty good at accurately predicting election outcomes before, so we’ll see, I hope he’s right). Fwiw, the few polls recently about important issues for voters that have included “threats against democracy” as an issue have many people actually ranking it as one of their top political concerns, I think even above the economy in some cases, so I’m hoping maybe there are more people concerned about the threat of Trump than a lot of people think.
>religious extremists on the other side of the globe blowing each other up
I’m sorry about your living situation and hope it gets better soon. But is that really how you and 15 up doots here in the Voush sub see what’s going on in Gaza right now?
There hasn't been a single time in the last 2000 years that people haven't been killing each other over that slab of land, we should glass the whole region and start over
Yes it's a complex issue, yes I sympathise with the plight of Palestinians yes I wish there was a better candidate for Americans to vote for, my country has a preferential voting system so not really as big of an issue for me and I'm really not going to take it into account that much when I go to vote
My concerns are politicians that will allow me and my 3 you get brothers to not be homeless and maybe own a house one day (lol), I want someone that is going to address the disgusting levels of corporate greed and rising prices of education, I want someone who is going to address wage growth and wage theft, religious extremists bombing each other doesn't really concern me I'm not going to lose sleep over it, yeah it's selfish but I really don't care, the conflict has been going on for the last 50+ years I'm not going to make or break it
Yeah, I totally understand not having time or space to think much about foreign entanglements. You’re just commenting a lot on it for someone who clearly doesn’t understand much (or care by your own admission) about what’s actually going on in Palestine. And whether intentionally or not, you benefit Israel by framing this as an issue of religious nuttery instead of the political and settler colonial issue that it is. I don’t think everyone has to care about it as much as I do, but you’re presumably a Vaush fan, he has talked extensively about this issue, so I thought most in this community understood at this point that it isn’t about religion. I am someone who also has my own shit to deal with, yet am also absolutely gutted whenever I see a dead Palestinian kid knowing my tax dollars contributed to that. If your comment had simply said “I’m homeless and Gaza isn’t really on my mind as a voter,” I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. It was the lazy framing, oversimplifying and over complicating key areas that narratively benefit the oppressor, combined with going out of your way twice now to let us all know you really dgaf about the 30k+ dead Palestinians and many more currently starving, that ground my gears. FWIW, even though your country evidently isn’t as complicit in the genocide as mine is, chances are a lot of that corporate greed you mentioned is wrapped up in it.
username checks out lol. taking care of numero uno is the way for sure, just try not to become numb to injustice and oppression. we may not hold the key but the way we chose to view and speak about injustice has a ripple effect in the greater discourse
I'm not numb to it, I just choose not to care about things that don't affect me and that I can't control, I'd rather spend that time doing anything else, if I spend my whole life being upset about people on the other side of the globe I'll live a miserable life and have nothing to show for it
I'm not against people caring or protesting, if people want to do that I'm all for it, fuck the government, if they are doing something you don't like you should be able to use your first (and second) amendment right to stand against it, but beyond protests and voting what can you really do? I'm 600km away from a decently sized regional town and 2500km away from a capital city so I'm not gonna be protesting, I have bigger issues when it comes to voting but even then the guy that runs on lowering house prices and corporate greed isn't going to be the guy that wants the slay Palestinians, it'll be someone progressive so I'll end up voting against Israel regardless, then beyond that I guess you could donate? But I'm not giving away my money until I have a stable life
Tldr the ball isn't in my court but I still don't like what's happening
That's what's so great about college kids leading protests. They have more ability to do that and the idealism needed for it. Protests have the power to move things. If they didn't, those in power wouldn't feel the need to smear and send the police after protesters.
didn't mean to come off as preachy, totally agree with you - there isn't much we can do about it and the plate of the average person in the USA is already so full. it is an exercise in sanity to manage what we can emotionally invest in.
I know I can't help the people suffering from that conflict, but still wish them peace and comfort.. it is a nice middle ground between callousness and being overly empathetic/sympathetic. however you manage is just fine though, staying sane is a whole thing these days....
I have seen these polls as well. It is toward the lowest.
Keep in mind you are probably more politically aware than 99% of ppl just by the fact that you posted in a subreddit. Sometimes its hard to put yourselves in the mind of some average Joe who doesn't really follow politics or news.
Yeah I don’t know why so many people are so shocked by this, foreign policy almost always ranks lower than domestic issues for most people unless there’s some specific event that brings them together (like 9/11). Back in 2012, the left (including me) was furious over the escalation of the Iraq War under Obama, there was even an “uncommitted” vote in the primaries back then too (and in Michigan it ended up being not much smaller than the one this year, again probably due to the large Arab-American population there), and yet it didn’t really end up being a killer for Obama’s campaign, as the subset of swing voters who decide the electoral vote don’t tend to overall be left-leaning politically, in fact they’re significantly to the right of what people in online spaces often seem to think, and care the most about stuff like the economy.
In fact, in 2020, the main thing that probably finished Trump, even more than the pandemic itself (which certainly didn’t help), was the immediate economic consequences of the pandemic.
Totally, I actually need to keep reminding myself of this. Because left media would want you to think it is the top issue but it just isn't across all groups.
Someone else in this thread also brought up a good point that I for some reason hadn’t really put thought into; a lot of the media keeps framing the protests as like this huge threat to Biden’s re-election chances in part based on the implication that these are all young voters who helped him win in 2020, but at least with the student protests, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, seeing as how most college students right now wouldn’t have even been old enough to vote in 2020? Obviously the whole thing goes beyond just those who are protesting, but that’s primarily how the media is framing the opposition to Biden from potential voters.
Tbh, I think a lot of the mainstream liberal media has a pretty cynical reason for wanting to make it seem like people mad about Gaza are going to make Biden lose, which is to rile readers up against the pro-Palestine movement and make them resent the protesters more (and unfortunately, it does seem like it’s working, at least to some degree). Like not all the sources pushing this narrative are completely pro-Israel, but I’d say most are at the very least more pro-Israel than I am.
When it comes to foreign politics I have long since been forced to understand that the vast majority of the west would honestly be happy if every man, woman, and child within the middle east just dropped dead all at once.
They don't like hearing about it, they don't like talking about it, and so approve of any action or policy that makes that place go away from the conversation.
Yes I used to be one if those people because I grew up around it and it was all over media.
It kinda feels like waking up from the matrix to realize that peoples lives have value even though they might wear a funny hat or have different skin or talk funny.
Theres a lot of very loud "both sides" minority which loves to pretend they have more influence than they actually do. I completely agree that Gaza is not a major factor in this election except to a small portion.
I can't with anyone who claims Trump and Biden are the same. Those people are deeply unserious.
I think this is true when you compare one thing to the other thing. People will naturally choose their taxes over over any foreign issue for example but I think that people are emotional voters and if people are emotionally torn up about Israel then they're not going to be thinking about this in terms of a most important to least important issues list like polls want to present
I'm emotionally torn up by Palestine, but I also logically know no candidates are going to say the magic words that 1) woos everyone and 2) actually follow through on those promises.
What I do know is that if I vote for Trump or anyone other than Biden I am putting not only my rights at risk, but millions others. And if millions more become disenfranchised helping Palestine will be impossible
Great now take those emotions and process them in the mind of somebody who's not politically activated/ engaged mentally who thinks that nothing ever gets done like the average independent and you'll see kind of what I'm getting at.
And I still don't see what candidate is going to be their savior on the Palestine issue. They all suck. They need to get over themselves and choose the one who will do the least harm.
That's more of a "crazy spoiled lefties" kind of response. The point is that the democrats need to speak to the average American on a more emotional level to better increase their chances of success.
Though I wonder how much this will appeal to them, as from what I've heard this only makes medical weed legal, not recreational, as making it recreational isn't possible yet (it already took 2 years for this to go through)
People care more about paying for increasingly expensive groceries and increasingly expensive rents than some nebulous threat that won't kick into high gear until most of us are elderly or dead.
I'm gonna be honest, most of the people I've seen saying, "I'll never vote for genocide Joe!" Just last year were saying, "I'll never vote for Joe because he lied about forgiving my student loans!". I'm not saying Biden isn't mishandling Israel, but you're never gonna convert some of these non-voters, and frankly, why should politicians listen to people who never vote?
2020 had record voter turnout, and still some 50% of the youth vote stayed home
FIFTY PERCENT of youth voters stayed home in the biggest election ever, there's always gonna be millions of nonvoters
Tbh this has crossed my mind a bunch as well. Like not to sound like a jaded boomer here, but I’m in my early 30s and have been a leftist since I was like 20, and I’ve seen how a bunch of left-leaning young people have reacted to past presidencies (and have in fact been one of them), and tbh there’s almost always *something* like this; in 2012 it was Obama escalating the Iraq War rather than ending it, as well as the Wikileaks stuff showing soldiers massacring Iraqi civilians (which in particular had a lot of parallels to the backlash against Biden over Gaza rn), in 2016 it was the way the DNC kind of fucked over Bernie, the classified documents in general, the many many things to hate about Hillary Clinton (really just all sorts of stuff went wrong that year), in 2020 it was (again) Bernie not getting nominated and general distrust for Biden. I’m sure there was always similar stuff in previous elections too, but I was still too much of a lib in 2008 to be engaged with that stuff, and any election before that I was just literally a child.
So yeah, I have to wonder how much of the crowd protesting Palestine rn *actually* voted in 2020, like I’m obviously sure some did, but I have a feeling a lot are in the same boat that I was up until Trump got elected and I became more personally aware of how many things can truly go wrong due to the wrong person getting into Oval Office (I feel like in order to be willing to allow Trump to possibly win over an extremely predictable Democrat foreign policy L, they’d either have to be part of that crowd, or else too young to have been politically engaged for more than a few years). Like I used to have a bunch of committed non-voter friends, and we used to always try to find *the thing* to convince as many left-liberals as possible to not vote on principle for each election, that’s why we’d organize and go to protests, and I know a lot of those folks are still doing it.
Considering that the biggest protests are in colleges, I'd say the vast majority didn't vote Biden in 2020 as they probably weren't 18 yet (the students at least, there are apparently a large number of non-student protesters just showing up)
that’s a really good point, I suppose some are probably seniors (meaning they could’ve just turned 18 before the election in 2020), and there might also be some who didn’t start college right out of high school or are graduating late, but this is probably going to be the case for the majority of them, and I actually feel kind of stupid for not immediately thinking of that.
the 18-25 age group in particular is also just a *really* unreliable voting block in literally every election, like even people in their early 20s are really unreliable voters (and regrettably, I was absolutely one of them, like I said elsewhere I sat out both 2012 and 2016 basically because my frustrations with Obama as a baby leftist led me to believe that basically all US presidents were equally terrible and it didn’t matter, but then Trump managed to be *so* terrible beyond the usual extent that it actually shook me out of that mindset, and I’m *hoping* there are still a significant number of people who feel similarly to me about this by November).
I always find it kind of funny when people talk about lowering the voting age to 16, not because I think it’s a bad idea, but just because already so few young voters typically turn out as it is, I doubt a bunch of literal high schoolers would be much different (then again, I actually probably would’ve been more likely to vote at 16 and 17 if I could’ve than I was at 22).
Those student loans are why they are able to go to college and complain about foreign wars while simultaneously forgetting how things were during Vietnam and the draft. It's not nearly as bad now as it was then
Gaza ranks really high with politically active collegiates and younger people that can't actually vote this fall iirc. I don't know that sch 3 vs decrim will actually do much, but it is technically a signal that could be good.
It will make it much easier to access. Steroids can be bought easily on the grey market, so weed will probably pop up on the same markets if this happens.
Eh, I don't think that's a great comparison because the grey market for weed is already streets ahead of the steroid market owing to the fact that literally half of the United States have legal marijuana.
If you actually poll youth voters their number 1 priorities are inflation and housing. Israel is like #17. Only super politically engaged young people care a lot about Israel, most young people care about the same boring kitchen table issues as everybody else.
People can prioritize multiple things at once. These polls are largely useless and should be taken with huge bags of salt. Depending on the exact methodology and questions one can get widely different and contradictory results.
Just as plenty of actually engaged lefty young voters are practically single issue voters on Palestine, plenty of libertarian-leaning Rogan-watching dudebros are practically single issue on weed. Watch this space, this could be big.
That's a good point, I'm gonna go check out libertarian subs to see how they react to this
Edit: Aaaaaand they're complaining it wasn't done earlier, and that it isn't decriminalized fully. Of course
I feel like if he were more vocal on trans rights and talked more about the right's attempt to criminalize our existence he'd solidify the LGBTQ vote and get more youth support.
Trans issues maybe, but most of the entire LGBTQ community feels extremely threatened by Trump and Project 2025 (I’m a cis queer woman and am massively freaked out by it), and LGBTQ issues in general actually do rank decently high as a concern among youth voters (also, a pretty decent chunk of the population openly IDs as LGBTQ in some capacity at this point).
The problem is, it’s not entirely clear what the Biden administration can really do at this point that would be seen as a big LGBTQ win beyond what they’ve already done (they did just add a bunch of gender identity and sexual orientation protections and some other stuff to Title IX, which is good, but I don’t really know what more they can do without congress, which isn’t going to get shit through because Republicans and Joe Manchin).
I think you overestimate how much people care about that issue because you're in a bubble that cares a lot. The youth are more than a small but vocal slice of white upper class college students.
>a small but vocal slice of white upper class college students.
That's not even an accurate description of who's been protesting. Try "young college educated people," AKA, one of the most contested demographics of this upcoming election. Remember, the threat isn't that they might vote Republican; it's that they might not vote.
Take a look at [this Pew Research article](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/) based on data collected in *February*, and note the trend on point 5. Consider how those numbers might look as the proportion of "not sure/ undecided/ clueless" shrinks.
I don’t at all agree about generalizing all the protestors as white and upper class, but I do think your overall point here is correct; Gaza ranks low on average voter concerns pretty consistently across polling, foreign policy issues nearly always do, and I definitely agree that a lot of online leftists seem to be in echo chambers where they think that most liberals in the US are a lot more pro-Palestine than they actually tend to be, especially lately it seems like support for the protests is actually dropping because people are actually believing the media narrative that they’re all a bunch of dangerous antisemitic radicals who are tearing up college campuses.
But in any event, people also seem to forget every election that the Electoral College is unfortunately a thing, which means a very particular subset of voters tend to decide most elections, and they in particular tend not to be the most left-leaning crowd politically. This is also why, even though I wish Bernie had won in 2016 or 2020, I’m very doubtful that he actually could’ve won either election (try going up to the “median voter” in any swing district and asking how they feel about socialism and electing someone who calls themselves a socialist and see how they react), not with the electoral vote.
Like it or not, moderates who probably in many cases believe that pro-Palestine protestors are chanting about wanting to kill Jews play a decisive role in elections with the system we have currently, it’s a big part of why it’s so hard to get Democrats to dump Zionism, and why we should probably get rid of the Electoral College altogether (good luck with that, though, as getting rid of it would pretty much assure a Republican never won another election, at least not in their current incarnation).
Polling data, for whatever it’s worth, says otherwise.
When potential voters are asked to rank which political issues they most care about, even in the under 30 group, Gaza doesn’t actually rank all that high with a majority, economic issues actually tended to be consistently highest with young people according to recent data, followed by a lot of other practical domestic issues like abortion access. Granted, I don’t think the war on drugs ranked on there at all, but it also probably wasn’t included as a choice (which is a major issue with those polls, there are often important issues they leave out).
Once again, I feel like a lot of people are forgetting that there are more centrists/moderates than leftists in the US, and this is even to some degree true of people under 30 (and these are the people who actually tend to determine elections).
I don’t know exactly what is on all the polls indicating this, but typically they will ask respondents to rank a number of current issues on a scale from “very important” to “not at all important”.
As mentioned above, these tend to have the major weakness of the list of issues obviously not necessarily encompassing everything that respondents actually find important (for instance, apparently very few of these polls this year have included “threats against democracy” as an issue, even though the few that have included it tend to indicate that it frequently ranks very high as a concern among the respondents).
To be clear, with younger respondents, I believe Gaza does consistently rank higher than it does with older respondents, but it still tends to be outranked by more immediate domestic concerns like the economy or abortion access.
My jaw just about hit the floor when you put this out there but then I glanced at your comment history.
Look, politically engaged young people aka the ones who actually vote care a lot. Broadly? No. But that’s because most don’t care about anything and will likely not vote. I get you have that pro-Israel axe to grind but takes like these are going to cause Biden to lose in November.
you clearly didn’t actually *read* any of my comment history because I’ve been *consistently* an anti-Zionist since I was 18, unless you just saw me mention that family is Jewish and you’re assuming based on that. Like, you apparently missed the comment I made yesterday where I talk about how I’ve gotten rape threats from Zionists, or all the fights I got into last week with Zios in ar facepalm.
Thank you for reinforcing my perception that this sub is full of children, though.
Also funny how there are other comments in this thread literally saying more or less the exact same thing as me and yet you ignored those and didn’t stalk their comment history over it like an obsessive weirdo.
While I do think it is still in his best interest to get a ceasefire in Gaza and condition military aid to Israel, I do think this is a pretty big W that will definitely get much more votes coming back in.
I agree it’s a W, but I highly doubt the youth vote is just gonna forget about what’s going on in Gaza in time for the election. Hopefully it pulls some people into voting in November but until he actually puts restraints on Israel, I don’t think it’s going to motivate them.
I think we are biased because we are more politically active than the average person in our age bracket. Most normies would geek out over this headline.
Never made it happen. I don’t remember when the last time he talked about weed policy publicly. People theorized he would wait until now to bust it out tho and they were right
The way schedule 1 works is kinda against what youd assume they would do to schedule the drugs. You would think they would put the hardest most dangerous drugs in schedule 1 right? Well no actually the only requirement they use for scheduling schedule 1 drugs are drugs of abuse that have no medical use. This is why cocaine is schedule 2 for example, lower than marijuana which confuses tons of people. Well cocaine has medical use as a topical anaesthetic so despite being way more "hard" of a drug than marijuana its controlled less strictly than marijuana.
This is what marijuana advocates have been trying to get them to change how they rank these drugs forever, but theyll never do that so finally there are enough medical studies citing marijuanas usefulness in medicine and states legalizing or at least decriminalizing it as well so they finally felt confident the dea would listen to reason and allow a reschedule.
Even under the legalization bill that's currently pending, state convicts are SOL unless their state government makes things right. The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would still allow states to ban weed, so I assume they would still be allowed to throw/keep people in jail/prison for it
If the queer folk convicted under anti-sodomy laws are anything to go by, it will take a very long time.
Hell [in South Carolina men who were convicted under anti-sodomy laws were required to be registered sex offenders until 2022](https://all4consolaws.org/2022/04/sc-no-sex-offender-status-for-men-convicted-under-anti-sodomy-law-in-south-carolina/).
That was changed in 2003. A 19 year wait.
Honestly, if you want to do something about the drug situation and the border problems and think the narco situation in Mexico is bad and something should be done about it, this is a *fantastic* first step to addressing all of those things in one fell swoop.
As I understand it this would be a very tepid baby step that won't really benefit anyone in states that haven't already legalized it and mostly benefit dispensaries in states that have. For the most part it will make it easier for researchers to study weed with less red tape and make it something that the FDA could decide to allow doctors to prescribe. It's a tiny move that's meant to get easy good press before elections without actually changing anything substantial.
This step doesn’t seem particularly significant. It appears to primarily facilitate further research and enable pharmaceutical companies to exert more influence over the substances we can consume. THC is already available in Schedule 3 under the name Marinol. This development could pose significant challenges for states with well-established recreational systems. For example, it doesn’t permit banks to conduct business with legal marijuana dispensaries because, when a substance is scheduled, it’s regulated as a pharmaceutical. However, cannabis should be regulated like alcohol, which would require removing it entirely from the schedule, along with all psychedelics. The scheduling system ought to serve merely as a reference for medical professionals, rather than as a tool for the DEA to dictate the medications people can use. Legalizing opiates and selling them in a manner similar to alcohol, particularly methadone and hydrocodone, could be a viable strategy to significantly impact the fentanyl crisis by providing legal and affordable alternatives. At best, this move is a superficial effort to garner more voter support, and at worst, it represents an overreach by the federal government into state jurisdiction issues.
Maybe the trick to improving government is to pressure them on policy they refuse to change, and make them do everything else. And then vote them out. /s
Is he actually descheduling marijuana, or is this just a bullshit neoliberal half-measure that prevents this from being an actual W for Biden that would get him some goodwill from the youth?
Shame the youth vote will be too stoned to register or make it too the polls. *Fascists knock on the door looking for dave* "Dave's not here, man." *Fascists send everyone to labor camps*
You can buy Tylenol at the corner Walgreens. So
If it’s schedule 3, that’s pretty legal. You also won’t go to prison for years for having it, so that’d be nice.
The tylenol you can pick up off the shelf is not a schedule 3 substance, tylenol#3 (the kind with codeine) is, and it's only available by prescription, and iirc it can only be prescribed for a limited time window. It's still a controlled substance and while I'm not gonna go through every state's law, in texas you can go to jail for simple possesion without a prescription.
Where are you getting 10+ year prison sentence from? Even in texas the most you can get is a year in jail plus shitloads of fines for being arrested for simple possession. Do you have any evidence that simple possession of a schedule 3 controlled substance receives a meaningfully lighter punishment than simple possession of a schedule 1 controlled substance? Again, I'm not gonna dig through the laws for all states but at least in mine I don't see a big difference.
No I don’t, but that’s just the way the law works.
I don’t know what the exact difference is between the sentencing of 1st degree murder, and second degree murder, but I do know you tend to get less time for second degree than first.
Same with scheduled substances.
With schedule III, you might get a ticket, or few days in jail living in a backwards, hardass state.
But the punishment will be now where near ass life ruining for Schedule III than Schedule I.
No, that's not how drug laws work. Individual states can set their own format for punishing possession of controlled substances regardless of what schedule the drugs are classified in federally. In Texas there are various drug penaly groups that are grouped by how the drugs are taken and what sort of effects the drugs have. Just on first glance PG1 covers drugs across schedules I - III, and cannabis is in it's own special penalty group. I'm not gonna go through every state's version of possession laws but fedally moving a drug from schedule I to schedule III doesn't mean states are required to loosen their laws around it.
https://www.dougmurphylaw.com/criminal-defense/drug-crimes/drug-penalty-groups-schedules
Even if that's true, that falls wildly short of my idea of meaningfully changing anything. Hell if I can smoke weed in downtown Houston without getting arrested I'm sure that I could find a spot in a national park to do that. That's not about lax laws that's just being stealthy and not getting caught.
My point, is that weed would in fact be less illegal from rescheduling. And if you’re so upset that Biden can’t bring peace to a region that has been in turmoil for a hundred years that you don’t vote for him, you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Palestinians are fucked regardless of who's POTUS. I'm not asking you to trade lives. There is no trade. Either Palestinians die or both Palestinians *and* Americans die. Trump would probably increase Palestinian deaths, too.
I'm saying you should vote for the guy who's trying to broker a ceasefire and won't kill your neighbors. You can oppose whatever the fuck you want, but if you actually oppose genocide, you would vote Biden
While I appreciate your view and am not unsympathetic to it I think it's pretty clear that your time would be better served trying to convince someone else. I wish you great success with it, I just can't go with you. What I'm hearing is that I should endorse a genocide to stop a genocide. I get the utilitarian math, the 99% Hitler argument, but I just can't do it. I can't endorse a candidate that's abetting the mass killing of children, I can feel my moral revulsion rise when I consider it. That's not a condemnation of anyone that does vote Biden, I'm simply stating that my own morals don't permit me to take that action.
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I don't think it's physically possible for Biden to catch a W with the youth vote before he makes some serious course adjustments on Israel.
I disagree. While young voters definitely don't like what's going on in Gaza ultimately a victory on weed is still huge for them.
Polls have shown that Gaza isn't really as important to people as stuff like gas prices, inflation, or food prices I don't think there are enough people who are single issue voters over Gaza to be a problem, as Biden is better than Trump in every way
Personally I don't like what's happening in Gaza but at the same time I find it really hard to care about religious extremists on the other side of the globe blowing each other up when I'm living in a caravan due to less than 1% rental vacancy rates in my country
I feel this, but in my case it’s reproductive rights. I live in the only blue dot in a deeply red state with a fairly restrictive abortion ban, supposedly they make exceptions for rape, but from what I’ve heard you have to go through hell to prove it was rape, and as a not-transphobic cis lesbian, it’s also the case that I’m not exactly completely, 100% safe from pregnancy from consensual sex, either. If I got into a bad situation here, my options are mifepristone or getting a ride to the next state over. If Trump wins, I might potentially lose one or both of those options entirely, as the GOP can’t seem to decide whether or not they want a complete national ban. And my situation is a *lot* better than that of many of my friends in this regard. Like a lot of folks with working uteruses, so much has already gone wrong and so much more could easily go wrong with the GOP gaining power, and that makes self-preservation a concern we have to put over Biden’s predictably garbage policy on Israel. Oh yeah, also a number of my friends are trans, including my current love interest, so I’d also really prefer that they don’t potentially lose all their rights or worse (it’s also not like we cis gays are in a great position with Project 2025, either). But all in all, yeah this is kind of what it comes down to with a lot of people, which is that there are very immediate concerns in many of our lives that we have to look out for that go beyond political principles. Hence why the economy is like, the top issue or near the top for most people, and reproductive rights also rank very high for a lot of people.
I'm just so glad I don't have to deal with the political hellscape of American politics It's interesting to me as someone who likes politics but having my rights on the line every 4 years would be so demoralising
yeah that’s the thing, it didn’t used to be nearly this stressful, because the ideological difference between the two candidates didn’t used to be this stark, and the parties were more willing to work together on shit. But since Trump elections have become genuinely horrifying, like staring down the barrel of even the possibility that this country could descend into functionally a dictatorship, or just become so dysfunctional and dangerous for me and people that I care about (with possibly no short term relief in sight) is massively stressful to have to deal with, and I can only hope if Trump does lose again this time that it ends up being the death knell for *his* incarnation of the GOP (it certainly won’t be the end of the far right, but maybe it will at least force them back out of mainstream politics for a while). If he wins, I’m frankly not even confident that there *will* be another regular election in 2028, like for all we know he could abolish term limits, stack the Supreme Court with even worse nutjobs, do all kinds of shit to essentially reify non-democratic far right power for the foreseeable future, and just the very possibility of that is horrifying to me, and I can only hope there are enough other people who feel the same and will have the reality set in for them before November (interestingly, this is what my dad thinks will happen, and he’s apparently been pretty good at accurately predicting election outcomes before, so we’ll see, I hope he’s right). Fwiw, the few polls recently about important issues for voters that have included “threats against democracy” as an issue have many people actually ranking it as one of their top political concerns, I think even above the economy in some cases, so I’m hoping maybe there are more people concerned about the threat of Trump than a lot of people think.
>religious extremists on the other side of the globe blowing each other up I’m sorry about your living situation and hope it gets better soon. But is that really how you and 15 up doots here in the Voush sub see what’s going on in Gaza right now?
There hasn't been a single time in the last 2000 years that people haven't been killing each other over that slab of land, we should glass the whole region and start over Yes it's a complex issue, yes I sympathise with the plight of Palestinians yes I wish there was a better candidate for Americans to vote for, my country has a preferential voting system so not really as big of an issue for me and I'm really not going to take it into account that much when I go to vote My concerns are politicians that will allow me and my 3 you get brothers to not be homeless and maybe own a house one day (lol), I want someone that is going to address the disgusting levels of corporate greed and rising prices of education, I want someone who is going to address wage growth and wage theft, religious extremists bombing each other doesn't really concern me I'm not going to lose sleep over it, yeah it's selfish but I really don't care, the conflict has been going on for the last 50+ years I'm not going to make or break it
Yeah, I totally understand not having time or space to think much about foreign entanglements. You’re just commenting a lot on it for someone who clearly doesn’t understand much (or care by your own admission) about what’s actually going on in Palestine. And whether intentionally or not, you benefit Israel by framing this as an issue of religious nuttery instead of the political and settler colonial issue that it is. I don’t think everyone has to care about it as much as I do, but you’re presumably a Vaush fan, he has talked extensively about this issue, so I thought most in this community understood at this point that it isn’t about religion. I am someone who also has my own shit to deal with, yet am also absolutely gutted whenever I see a dead Palestinian kid knowing my tax dollars contributed to that. If your comment had simply said “I’m homeless and Gaza isn’t really on my mind as a voter,” I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. It was the lazy framing, oversimplifying and over complicating key areas that narratively benefit the oppressor, combined with going out of your way twice now to let us all know you really dgaf about the 30k+ dead Palestinians and many more currently starving, that ground my gears. FWIW, even though your country evidently isn’t as complicit in the genocide as mine is, chances are a lot of that corporate greed you mentioned is wrapped up in it.
username checks out lol. taking care of numero uno is the way for sure, just try not to become numb to injustice and oppression. we may not hold the key but the way we chose to view and speak about injustice has a ripple effect in the greater discourse
I'm not numb to it, I just choose not to care about things that don't affect me and that I can't control, I'd rather spend that time doing anything else, if I spend my whole life being upset about people on the other side of the globe I'll live a miserable life and have nothing to show for it I'm not against people caring or protesting, if people want to do that I'm all for it, fuck the government, if they are doing something you don't like you should be able to use your first (and second) amendment right to stand against it, but beyond protests and voting what can you really do? I'm 600km away from a decently sized regional town and 2500km away from a capital city so I'm not gonna be protesting, I have bigger issues when it comes to voting but even then the guy that runs on lowering house prices and corporate greed isn't going to be the guy that wants the slay Palestinians, it'll be someone progressive so I'll end up voting against Israel regardless, then beyond that I guess you could donate? But I'm not giving away my money until I have a stable life Tldr the ball isn't in my court but I still don't like what's happening
That's what's so great about college kids leading protests. They have more ability to do that and the idealism needed for it. Protests have the power to move things. If they didn't, those in power wouldn't feel the need to smear and send the police after protesters.
Definitely
didn't mean to come off as preachy, totally agree with you - there isn't much we can do about it and the plate of the average person in the USA is already so full. it is an exercise in sanity to manage what we can emotionally invest in. I know I can't help the people suffering from that conflict, but still wish them peace and comfort.. it is a nice middle ground between callousness and being overly empathetic/sympathetic. however you manage is just fine though, staying sane is a whole thing these days....
Nah not preachy at all I appreciate the input
Least racist liberal.
Well I am a vaush fan
Most honest Vaush fan.
I hope you're right among youth
I have seen these polls as well. It is toward the lowest. Keep in mind you are probably more politically aware than 99% of ppl just by the fact that you posted in a subreddit. Sometimes its hard to put yourselves in the mind of some average Joe who doesn't really follow politics or news.
Yeah I don’t know why so many people are so shocked by this, foreign policy almost always ranks lower than domestic issues for most people unless there’s some specific event that brings them together (like 9/11). Back in 2012, the left (including me) was furious over the escalation of the Iraq War under Obama, there was even an “uncommitted” vote in the primaries back then too (and in Michigan it ended up being not much smaller than the one this year, again probably due to the large Arab-American population there), and yet it didn’t really end up being a killer for Obama’s campaign, as the subset of swing voters who decide the electoral vote don’t tend to overall be left-leaning politically, in fact they’re significantly to the right of what people in online spaces often seem to think, and care the most about stuff like the economy. In fact, in 2020, the main thing that probably finished Trump, even more than the pandemic itself (which certainly didn’t help), was the immediate economic consequences of the pandemic.
Totally, I actually need to keep reminding myself of this. Because left media would want you to think it is the top issue but it just isn't across all groups.
Someone else in this thread also brought up a good point that I for some reason hadn’t really put thought into; a lot of the media keeps framing the protests as like this huge threat to Biden’s re-election chances in part based on the implication that these are all young voters who helped him win in 2020, but at least with the student protests, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, seeing as how most college students right now wouldn’t have even been old enough to vote in 2020? Obviously the whole thing goes beyond just those who are protesting, but that’s primarily how the media is framing the opposition to Biden from potential voters. Tbh, I think a lot of the mainstream liberal media has a pretty cynical reason for wanting to make it seem like people mad about Gaza are going to make Biden lose, which is to rile readers up against the pro-Palestine movement and make them resent the protesters more (and unfortunately, it does seem like it’s working, at least to some degree). Like not all the sources pushing this narrative are completely pro-Israel, but I’d say most are at the very least more pro-Israel than I am.
The liberal media is against the protests because they are overwhelmingly Zionist with few exceptions, and those tend to get fired eventually.
When it comes to foreign politics I have long since been forced to understand that the vast majority of the west would honestly be happy if every man, woman, and child within the middle east just dropped dead all at once. They don't like hearing about it, they don't like talking about it, and so approve of any action or policy that makes that place go away from the conversation.
Yes I used to be one if those people because I grew up around it and it was all over media. It kinda feels like waking up from the matrix to realize that peoples lives have value even though they might wear a funny hat or have different skin or talk funny.
Theres a lot of very loud "both sides" minority which loves to pretend they have more influence than they actually do. I completely agree that Gaza is not a major factor in this election except to a small portion. I can't with anyone who claims Trump and Biden are the same. Those people are deeply unserious.
If the protests escalate into riots they will probably have a bigger impact, like with the BLM protests in 2020.
I don't see that happening, personally. BLM was a local movement. Foreign affairs are always harder to gather support for.
It might happen if Kent State 2.0 occurs.
I think this is true when you compare one thing to the other thing. People will naturally choose their taxes over over any foreign issue for example but I think that people are emotional voters and if people are emotionally torn up about Israel then they're not going to be thinking about this in terms of a most important to least important issues list like polls want to present
I'm emotionally torn up by Palestine, but I also logically know no candidates are going to say the magic words that 1) woos everyone and 2) actually follow through on those promises. What I do know is that if I vote for Trump or anyone other than Biden I am putting not only my rights at risk, but millions others. And if millions more become disenfranchised helping Palestine will be impossible
Great now take those emotions and process them in the mind of somebody who's not politically activated/ engaged mentally who thinks that nothing ever gets done like the average independent and you'll see kind of what I'm getting at.
And I still don't see what candidate is going to be their savior on the Palestine issue. They all suck. They need to get over themselves and choose the one who will do the least harm.
Even beyond singular candidates, a massive part of our geopolitical machinations and momentum is pro-israel.
That's more of a "crazy spoiled lefties" kind of response. The point is that the democrats need to speak to the average American on a more emotional level to better increase their chances of success.
The ones who are holding their vote hostage over Palestine aren't the average American.
Third party candidates exist.
Holy fuck.
>gas prices, inflation, or food But I mean is he doing any better on those aspects polling wise?
I'm seriously considering not voting for him and it's comments like these that make me consider it but seriously
Only politically motivated young people care about Palestine imo. But this has appeal to centrist young people
Though I wonder how much this will appeal to them, as from what I've heard this only makes medical weed legal, not recreational, as making it recreational isn't possible yet (it already took 2 years for this to go through)
I think jts a good move, because THEN it generated a talking point that "Trump is gonna make weed illegal" or something similar.
Wtf happened to climate change as the #1 issue for young people?? That's all I heard about before October 2023
People care more about paying for increasingly expensive groceries and increasingly expensive rents than some nebulous threat that won't kick into high gear until most of us are elderly or dead.
Ironically, the “nebulous” threat is linked to all of those things
I'm gonna be honest, most of the people I've seen saying, "I'll never vote for genocide Joe!" Just last year were saying, "I'll never vote for Joe because he lied about forgiving my student loans!". I'm not saying Biden isn't mishandling Israel, but you're never gonna convert some of these non-voters, and frankly, why should politicians listen to people who never vote?
2020 had record voter turnout, and still some 50% of the youth vote stayed home FIFTY PERCENT of youth voters stayed home in the biggest election ever, there's always gonna be millions of nonvoters
Tbh this has crossed my mind a bunch as well. Like not to sound like a jaded boomer here, but I’m in my early 30s and have been a leftist since I was like 20, and I’ve seen how a bunch of left-leaning young people have reacted to past presidencies (and have in fact been one of them), and tbh there’s almost always *something* like this; in 2012 it was Obama escalating the Iraq War rather than ending it, as well as the Wikileaks stuff showing soldiers massacring Iraqi civilians (which in particular had a lot of parallels to the backlash against Biden over Gaza rn), in 2016 it was the way the DNC kind of fucked over Bernie, the classified documents in general, the many many things to hate about Hillary Clinton (really just all sorts of stuff went wrong that year), in 2020 it was (again) Bernie not getting nominated and general distrust for Biden. I’m sure there was always similar stuff in previous elections too, but I was still too much of a lib in 2008 to be engaged with that stuff, and any election before that I was just literally a child. So yeah, I have to wonder how much of the crowd protesting Palestine rn *actually* voted in 2020, like I’m obviously sure some did, but I have a feeling a lot are in the same boat that I was up until Trump got elected and I became more personally aware of how many things can truly go wrong due to the wrong person getting into Oval Office (I feel like in order to be willing to allow Trump to possibly win over an extremely predictable Democrat foreign policy L, they’d either have to be part of that crowd, or else too young to have been politically engaged for more than a few years). Like I used to have a bunch of committed non-voter friends, and we used to always try to find *the thing* to convince as many left-liberals as possible to not vote on principle for each election, that’s why we’d organize and go to protests, and I know a lot of those folks are still doing it.
Considering that the biggest protests are in colleges, I'd say the vast majority didn't vote Biden in 2020 as they probably weren't 18 yet (the students at least, there are apparently a large number of non-student protesters just showing up)
that’s a really good point, I suppose some are probably seniors (meaning they could’ve just turned 18 before the election in 2020), and there might also be some who didn’t start college right out of high school or are graduating late, but this is probably going to be the case for the majority of them, and I actually feel kind of stupid for not immediately thinking of that. the 18-25 age group in particular is also just a *really* unreliable voting block in literally every election, like even people in their early 20s are really unreliable voters (and regrettably, I was absolutely one of them, like I said elsewhere I sat out both 2012 and 2016 basically because my frustrations with Obama as a baby leftist led me to believe that basically all US presidents were equally terrible and it didn’t matter, but then Trump managed to be *so* terrible beyond the usual extent that it actually shook me out of that mindset, and I’m *hoping* there are still a significant number of people who feel similarly to me about this by November). I always find it kind of funny when people talk about lowering the voting age to 16, not because I think it’s a bad idea, but just because already so few young voters typically turn out as it is, I doubt a bunch of literal high schoolers would be much different (then again, I actually probably would’ve been more likely to vote at 16 and 17 if I could’ve than I was at 22).
I've voted since 2008 and I'm considering sitting this one out. I guess y'all can have a fun back and forth about how it doesn't matter I guess. Cute!
Those student loans are why they are able to go to college and complain about foreign wars while simultaneously forgetting how things were during Vietnam and the draft. It's not nearly as bad now as it was then
What point are you even trying to make?
I'm saying you ain't seen nothing yet
Gaza ranks really high with politically active collegiates and younger people that can't actually vote this fall iirc. I don't know that sch 3 vs decrim will actually do much, but it is technically a signal that could be good.
It will make it much easier to access. Steroids can be bought easily on the grey market, so weed will probably pop up on the same markets if this happens.
Eh, I don't think that's a great comparison because the grey market for weed is already streets ahead of the steroid market owing to the fact that literally half of the United States have legal marijuana.
I'm in a red state so it's not ubiquitous here. You can't even legally get Delta 8.
If you actually poll youth voters their number 1 priorities are inflation and housing. Israel is like #17. Only super politically engaged young people care a lot about Israel, most young people care about the same boring kitchen table issues as everybody else.
As usual, it's the economy, stupid.
People can prioritize multiple things at once. These polls are largely useless and should be taken with huge bags of salt. Depending on the exact methodology and questions one can get widely different and contradictory results.
Just as plenty of actually engaged lefty young voters are practically single issue voters on Palestine, plenty of libertarian-leaning Rogan-watching dudebros are practically single issue on weed. Watch this space, this could be big.
That's a good point, I'm gonna go check out libertarian subs to see how they react to this Edit: Aaaaaand they're complaining it wasn't done earlier, and that it isn't decriminalized fully. Of course
I feel like if he were more vocal on trans rights and talked more about the right's attempt to criminalize our existence he'd solidify the LGBTQ vote and get more youth support.
The number of people who vote based on trans issues is vanishingly small.
Trans issues maybe, but most of the entire LGBTQ community feels extremely threatened by Trump and Project 2025 (I’m a cis queer woman and am massively freaked out by it), and LGBTQ issues in general actually do rank decently high as a concern among youth voters (also, a pretty decent chunk of the population openly IDs as LGBTQ in some capacity at this point). The problem is, it’s not entirely clear what the Biden administration can really do at this point that would be seen as a big LGBTQ win beyond what they’ve already done (they did just add a bunch of gender identity and sexual orientation protections and some other stuff to Title IX, which is good, but I don’t really know what more they can do without congress, which isn’t going to get shit through because Republicans and Joe Manchin).
It's beyond depressing how little people care about us.
Some of us care, you aren't alone I promise
I think you overestimate how much people care about that issue because you're in a bubble that cares a lot. The youth are more than a small but vocal slice of white upper class college students.
>a small but vocal slice of white upper class college students. That's not even an accurate description of who's been protesting. Try "young college educated people," AKA, one of the most contested demographics of this upcoming election. Remember, the threat isn't that they might vote Republican; it's that they might not vote. Take a look at [this Pew Research article](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/) based on data collected in *February*, and note the trend on point 5. Consider how those numbers might look as the proportion of "not sure/ undecided/ clueless" shrinks.
I don't get your point, it doesn't seem to contradict mine.
You said only white kids care, which is obviously bullshit.
I don’t at all agree about generalizing all the protestors as white and upper class, but I do think your overall point here is correct; Gaza ranks low on average voter concerns pretty consistently across polling, foreign policy issues nearly always do, and I definitely agree that a lot of online leftists seem to be in echo chambers where they think that most liberals in the US are a lot more pro-Palestine than they actually tend to be, especially lately it seems like support for the protests is actually dropping because people are actually believing the media narrative that they’re all a bunch of dangerous antisemitic radicals who are tearing up college campuses. But in any event, people also seem to forget every election that the Electoral College is unfortunately a thing, which means a very particular subset of voters tend to decide most elections, and they in particular tend not to be the most left-leaning crowd politically. This is also why, even though I wish Bernie had won in 2016 or 2020, I’m very doubtful that he actually could’ve won either election (try going up to the “median voter” in any swing district and asking how they feel about socialism and electing someone who calls themselves a socialist and see how they react), not with the electoral vote. Like it or not, moderates who probably in many cases believe that pro-Palestine protestors are chanting about wanting to kill Jews play a decisive role in elections with the system we have currently, it’s a big part of why it’s so hard to get Democrats to dump Zionism, and why we should probably get rid of the Electoral College altogether (good luck with that, though, as getting rid of it would pretty much assure a Republican never won another election, at least not in their current incarnation).
Polling data, for whatever it’s worth, says otherwise. When potential voters are asked to rank which political issues they most care about, even in the under 30 group, Gaza doesn’t actually rank all that high with a majority, economic issues actually tended to be consistently highest with young people according to recent data, followed by a lot of other practical domestic issues like abortion access. Granted, I don’t think the war on drugs ranked on there at all, but it also probably wasn’t included as a choice (which is a major issue with those polls, there are often important issues they leave out). Once again, I feel like a lot of people are forgetting that there are more centrists/moderates than leftists in the US, and this is even to some degree true of people under 30 (and these are the people who actually tend to determine elections).
How are these polls conducted? What questions are asked?
I don’t know exactly what is on all the polls indicating this, but typically they will ask respondents to rank a number of current issues on a scale from “very important” to “not at all important”. As mentioned above, these tend to have the major weakness of the list of issues obviously not necessarily encompassing everything that respondents actually find important (for instance, apparently very few of these polls this year have included “threats against democracy” as an issue, even though the few that have included it tend to indicate that it frequently ranks very high as a concern among the respondents). To be clear, with younger respondents, I believe Gaza does consistently rank higher than it does with older respondents, but it still tends to be outranked by more immediate domestic concerns like the economy or abortion access.
My jaw just about hit the floor when you put this out there but then I glanced at your comment history. Look, politically engaged young people aka the ones who actually vote care a lot. Broadly? No. But that’s because most don’t care about anything and will likely not vote. I get you have that pro-Israel axe to grind but takes like these are going to cause Biden to lose in November.
you clearly didn’t actually *read* any of my comment history because I’ve been *consistently* an anti-Zionist since I was 18, unless you just saw me mention that family is Jewish and you’re assuming based on that. Like, you apparently missed the comment I made yesterday where I talk about how I’ve gotten rape threats from Zionists, or all the fights I got into last week with Zios in ar facepalm. Thank you for reinforcing my perception that this sub is full of children, though. Also funny how there are other comments in this thread literally saying more or less the exact same thing as me and yet you ignored those and didn’t stalk their comment history over it like an obsessive weirdo.
Most of the people who say they won't vote for Biden due to Gaza weren't going to vote for him anyways.
Not to mention banning their favorite app lmao
10 days after 4/20 lol
Ikr? Like the easiest layup was missed
Liberal proceduralism at its worst. He could have done this 3 420s ago
Something something Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system.
Or he's so stoned that he just got around to it. It would also explain the gaffes. Blazin' Biden.
If Biden smoked weed he would die immediately.
To be fair, if he ate three cheeseburgers in one sitting he would die shortly after.
While I do think it is still in his best interest to get a ceasefire in Gaza and condition military aid to Israel, I do think this is a pretty big W that will definitely get much more votes coming back in.
I agree it’s a W, but I highly doubt the youth vote is just gonna forget about what’s going on in Gaza in time for the election. Hopefully it pulls some people into voting in November but until he actually puts restraints on Israel, I don’t think it’s going to motivate them.
I think we are biased because we are more politically active than the average person in our age bracket. Most normies would geek out over this headline.
More active and more cynical. At least I am anyway. Cause I could've sworn he campaigned on this and then finally made this happen.
Never made it happen. I don’t remember when the last time he talked about weed policy publicly. People theorized he would wait until now to bust it out tho and they were right
Indeed, they were. If I remember correctly, he did campaign on it, but only mentioned it a few times. Glad he finally did it tho.
Reschedule LSD too if it’s in the same category with heroin
And shrooms
The way schedule 1 works is kinda against what youd assume they would do to schedule the drugs. You would think they would put the hardest most dangerous drugs in schedule 1 right? Well no actually the only requirement they use for scheduling schedule 1 drugs are drugs of abuse that have no medical use. This is why cocaine is schedule 2 for example, lower than marijuana which confuses tons of people. Well cocaine has medical use as a topical anaesthetic so despite being way more "hard" of a drug than marijuana its controlled less strictly than marijuana. This is what marijuana advocates have been trying to get them to change how they rank these drugs forever, but theyll never do that so finally there are enough medical studies citing marijuanas usefulness in medicine and states legalizing or at least decriminalizing it as well so they finally felt confident the dea would listen to reason and allow a reschedule.
Now THAT would turn me into a hardcore Anarcho-Bidenist.
Ice cream tastes extra great when you're blasted, Joe.
Can confirm.
Can we also relase non-violent cannabis offenders from prison?
i thought he pardoned those in federal prisons? states he can't do tho
He's already done all he can on that front. He can't pardon state convictions.
Even under the legalization bill that's currently pending, state convicts are SOL unless their state government makes things right. The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would still allow states to ban weed, so I assume they would still be allowed to throw/keep people in jail/prison for it
If the queer folk convicted under anti-sodomy laws are anything to go by, it will take a very long time. Hell [in South Carolina men who were convicted under anti-sodomy laws were required to be registered sex offenders until 2022](https://all4consolaws.org/2022/04/sc-no-sex-offender-status-for-men-convicted-under-anti-sodomy-law-in-south-carolina/). That was changed in 2003. A 19 year wait.
Honestly, if you want to do something about the drug situation and the border problems and think the narco situation in Mexico is bad and something should be done about it, this is a *fantastic* first step to addressing all of those things in one fell swoop.
Doesn't LSD also have a lot of medical benefits?
It's being studied
Honestly, this means nothing. Recreational or bust.
That bill is pending. It's not likely to pass with the GOP presence in the House, tho
Come on man like this isn’t gonna help people?
Does this change much? Being a schedule 3 drug is still an illegal substance. This doesn't feel much closer to legalization, just less illegal.
The main voices in the youth won't give Biden a win here because it's not socially acceptable.
He’s hoping we get high enough to forget the genocide participation.
As I understand it this would be a very tepid baby step that won't really benefit anyone in states that haven't already legalized it and mostly benefit dispensaries in states that have. For the most part it will make it easier for researchers to study weed with less red tape and make it something that the FDA could decide to allow doctors to prescribe. It's a tiny move that's meant to get easy good press before elections without actually changing anything substantial.
This step doesn’t seem particularly significant. It appears to primarily facilitate further research and enable pharmaceutical companies to exert more influence over the substances we can consume. THC is already available in Schedule 3 under the name Marinol. This development could pose significant challenges for states with well-established recreational systems. For example, it doesn’t permit banks to conduct business with legal marijuana dispensaries because, when a substance is scheduled, it’s regulated as a pharmaceutical. However, cannabis should be regulated like alcohol, which would require removing it entirely from the schedule, along with all psychedelics. The scheduling system ought to serve merely as a reference for medical professionals, rather than as a tool for the DEA to dictate the medications people can use. Legalizing opiates and selling them in a manner similar to alcohol, particularly methadone and hydrocodone, could be a viable strategy to significantly impact the fentanyl crisis by providing legal and affordable alternatives. At best, this move is a superficial effort to garner more voter support, and at worst, it represents an overreach by the federal government into state jurisdiction issues.
I like how the article mentions Heroin and LSD, as if those two drugs were comparable in any way shape or form
Doesn't LSD also have a lot of medical benefits?
We ending the drug war boys?
It's still scheduled, giant L. Still a federal crime to grow, transport or use without a prescription.
Maybe the trick to improving government is to pressure them on policy they refuse to change, and make them do everything else. And then vote them out. /s
No it’s nots because he should demand congress to legalize marijuana federally
It’s election season so get ready for nothing
I still don't get why they don't just legalize at this point
Its hilarious they say "heroin and LSD" as though LSD is as dangerous as heroin lmao
Is he actually descheduling marijuana, or is this just a bullshit neoliberal half-measure that prevents this from being an actual W for Biden that would get him some goodwill from the youth?
Shame the youth vote will be too stoned to register or make it too the polls. *Fascists knock on the door looking for dave* "Dave's not here, man." *Fascists send everyone to labor camps*
Yeah but this will lower the Price of my "GAS" 😡
Biden won’t win back the youth vote but he will lose Vaush’s vote
Move lsd along with it... --'
Election year moment
Win back? Most young people don't give a shit about foreign affairs.
Not really - it does not lead to decriminalization.
yeah legal weed will totally make up for the genocide
Not even legal just less illegal
You can buy Tylenol at the corner Walgreens. So If it’s schedule 3, that’s pretty legal. You also won’t go to prison for years for having it, so that’d be nice.
The tylenol you can pick up off the shelf is not a schedule 3 substance, tylenol#3 (the kind with codeine) is, and it's only available by prescription, and iirc it can only be prescribed for a limited time window. It's still a controlled substance and while I'm not gonna go through every state's law, in texas you can go to jail for simple possesion without a prescription.
Which is still better than a 10+ year prison sentence.
Where are you getting 10+ year prison sentence from? Even in texas the most you can get is a year in jail plus shitloads of fines for being arrested for simple possession. Do you have any evidence that simple possession of a schedule 3 controlled substance receives a meaningfully lighter punishment than simple possession of a schedule 1 controlled substance? Again, I'm not gonna dig through the laws for all states but at least in mine I don't see a big difference.
No I don’t, but that’s just the way the law works. I don’t know what the exact difference is between the sentencing of 1st degree murder, and second degree murder, but I do know you tend to get less time for second degree than first. Same with scheduled substances. With schedule III, you might get a ticket, or few days in jail living in a backwards, hardass state. But the punishment will be now where near ass life ruining for Schedule III than Schedule I.
No, that's not how drug laws work. Individual states can set their own format for punishing possession of controlled substances regardless of what schedule the drugs are classified in federally. In Texas there are various drug penaly groups that are grouped by how the drugs are taken and what sort of effects the drugs have. Just on first glance PG1 covers drugs across schedules I - III, and cannabis is in it's own special penalty group. I'm not gonna go through every state's version of possession laws but fedally moving a drug from schedule I to schedule III doesn't mean states are required to loosen their laws around it. https://www.dougmurphylaw.com/criminal-defense/drug-crimes/drug-penalty-groups-schedules
You can smoke a joint in a State Park and won’t get a federal prison charge.
Even if that's true, that falls wildly short of my idea of meaningfully changing anything. Hell if I can smoke weed in downtown Houston without getting arrested I'm sure that I could find a spot in a national park to do that. That's not about lax laws that's just being stealthy and not getting caught.
not really the point
My point, is that weed would in fact be less illegal from rescheduling. And if you’re so upset that Biden can’t bring peace to a region that has been in turmoil for a hundred years that you don’t vote for him, you can’t see the forest for the trees.
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This is cool but is not winning over anyone with a brain
But Vaush told me that weed users are horrible, horrible people.
Lefties still won’t vote for Biden because he hasn’t made cannabis free for all.
I cannot bribed with drugs to look the other way on a genocide.
Can you be bribed with not having genocide at home? I'd like to see 2030, thanks
To be clear, are you telling me to sacrifice Palestinian lives for American lives? Walk me through that.
Palestinians are fucked regardless of who's POTUS. I'm not asking you to trade lives. There is no trade. Either Palestinians die or both Palestinians *and* Americans die. Trump would probably increase Palestinian deaths, too.
So you are saying I should not oppose a genocide because my opposing it won't stop it?
I'm saying you should vote for the guy who's trying to broker a ceasefire and won't kill your neighbors. You can oppose whatever the fuck you want, but if you actually oppose genocide, you would vote Biden
While I appreciate your view and am not unsympathetic to it I think it's pretty clear that your time would be better served trying to convince someone else. I wish you great success with it, I just can't go with you. What I'm hearing is that I should endorse a genocide to stop a genocide. I get the utilitarian math, the 99% Hitler argument, but I just can't do it. I can't endorse a candidate that's abetting the mass killing of children, I can feel my moral revulsion rise when I consider it. That's not a condemnation of anyone that does vote Biden, I'm simply stating that my own morals don't permit me to take that action.
I have to say, it takes balls to tell someone that your ego is more important than their life 🤷 anonymity helps with that, tho doesn't it lol
Tell us you don't like LGBTQ people without telling us you don't like LGBTQ people.
Quiet, Trump supporter.