Four and a half weeks before the United States congressional elections, President Joe Biden has made a move that Nancy Pelosi was quick to describe as a "historic step" toward a new cannabis policy.

The Speaker of the House knows how much the left wing of her party has been waiting for this.

She emphasized that the step underscores the Democrats' commitment to justice - especially for all those who have been unfairly criminalized.

What was meant above all were: Afro-Americans and other minorities who, compared to the white majority population, feel the harshness of the rule of law disproportionately when it comes to the consumption of soft drugs.

Majid Sattar

Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.

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The President on Thursday pardoned all those citizens convicted of marijuana possession under federal law.

He also announced that he would investigate whether marijuana should continue to fall into the same category as heroin or LSD.

That makes no sense, said Biden.

He also urged state governors to follow his lead.

The presidential clemency affects approximately 6,500 people convicted of marijuana possession under the Controlled Substance Act between 1992 and 2021.

Thousands of cases from the Capital District of Washington, to which the District of Columbia Penal Code applies, are added.

Biden made it clear in the executive order that the act of clemency only applies to possession of marijuana, not marketing and sale.

Biden is fulfilling a campaign promise

The number of convictions at the state level is far higher.

But Biden is fulfilling a campaign promise with the move.

No one should go to jail for marijuana use, he had said repeatedly in 2020.

Imposing jail terms for marijuana possession has turned the lives of too many citizens upside down, the president wrote on Twitter - apart from the ethnic disparity.

"Today we start to correct these mistakes".

Nineteen states and the Capital District have legalized or condoned in one form or another the use and possession of small amounts of cannabis in recent years.

Civil rights groups had urged Biden to take the step as part of a judicial reform that would eliminate injustices against minorities.

They praised the measure, although in their view it does not go far enough.

Specifically, the decree means that affected citizens can apply to the Justice Department in Washington for a certificate confirming their pardon.

This should help them when looking for a job or applying to college.

When asked why the President had now decided to take this step, a senior government official referred to both Biden's campaign promises and the fact that reform in Congress had stalled.

Biden has repeatedly emphasized that he would not be in the White House without African American voters.

They secured him success against party leftist Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries.

And they made sure that he was ahead of Donald Trump in the crucial swing states in the presidential election.

In order to at least defend his party's control in the Senate in November, in the end it's again about the decisive votes of the "suburban women", that rotating group of university-educated women.

Necessary condition for this group of voters to be able to decide

for the Democrats, however, is the mobilization of the black electorate in the contested states.

In 2020, for example, in Georgia they made up 50 percent of Democratic voters.

In Pennsylvania it was 21 percent and in Michigan 20 percent.

He accepts that Republicans will accuse the President of weakening the rule of law.