He faces 10 years to life for selling pot, a legal business, in most states

Jonathan Wall, whose federal trial begins on May 2, notes that many people openly engage in similar conduct with impunity.

Jonathan Wall, a 26-year-old cannabis entrepreneur, has been confined at a federal supermax facility in Maryland for nearly 20 months, awaiting a May 2 trial that could send him to prison for life. Wall is accused of transporting more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana from California, where cannabis is legal for recreational use, to Maryland, which allows only medical use.

Wall’s case illustrates the draconian penalties that can still be imposed on people for selling pot at a time when most states have legalized marijuana businesses. As far as the federal government is concerned, all of those businesses are criminal enterprises. But depending on how federal prosecutors choose to exercise their discretion, selling pot can make you millions of dollars as a state-licensed supplier, or it can send you to prison for decades.

Under federal law, distributing 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum penalty of life in prison. Maryland also treats unauthorized marijuana sales harshly: A “drug kingpin” (meaning “an organizer, supervisor, financier, or manager”) in a case involving 50 pounds or more is subject to “imprisonment for not less than 20 years and not exceeding 40 years without the possibility of parole.” In California, by contrast, state-licensed recreational sales are legal, while selling marijuana without a license is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Wall writes in a Truthout essay published last August. “How can it be that the punishment for selling weed is so severe, especially in this day and age, with widespread decriminalization and cannabis medicinally or recreationally legal in the majority of states and territories that make up this country?” It’s a good question.

Thirty-seven states have legalized medical marijuana, and 18 of them, accounting for more than two-fifths of the U.S. population, also allow recreational use. While two-thirds of Americans think marijuana should be legal, the federal government continues to classify it as a Schedule I drug, a category supposedly reserved for substances that have a high potential for abuse, have no accepted medical applications, and cannot be used safely even under medical supervision.

Although President Joe Biden has said he favors reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule II drug, his administration has not initiated that process, which in any event would not affect the criminal penalties that defendants like Wall face. Biden opposes repealing the federal ban on marijuana, which seems inconsistent with his position that states should be free to legalize cannabis without federal interference.

Biden also promised that he would “broadly use his clemency power” to commute the sentences of nonviolent drug offenders and specifically said that anyone who had been convicted of marijuana offenses “should be let out of jail.” But so far he has not used his clemency power at all. Far from releasing people who violated pot prohibition, his administration is trying to imprison more of them, as Wall’s case shows.

“Who will be the last person incarcerated for marijuana in the United States?” asked the headline of a full-page ad that Wall’s supporters ran in The Washington Post last September. But even in the unlikely event that the Senate joined the House in approving a bill repealing federal prohibition, and even if Biden changed his mind and signed it, that would not necessarily mean people would no longer be “incarcerated for marijuana.”

To Read The Rest Of This Article By Jacob Sullum on Reason

Published: April 19, 2022