It’s going to win Biden the election.

All of this incarceration happens simultaneously as states collect billions of tax dollars from the blossoming industry. The hypocrisy is more damning each year. States have already collected $10 billion in taxes from legal weed, and $3 billion in 2022 alone. In cash. Legalizing cannabis will help pull the country out of any lingering recession. Economists estimate the legal cannabis industry will create 1 million jobs in America. Without federal decriminalization, the legal cannabis businesses are relegated to operating in cash, putting them at risk and forcing them into the shadows.

Every state that legalizes cannabis benefits greatly from it. California made $1.2 billion in tax money from the legal weed industry in 2021 and $269.3 million in Q3 of 2023. Egregiously high taxes (like in California’s market) are not necessary to see an economic lift: somewhat reasonably taxed markets like Colorado made over $270 million in 2023 and Washington made over $500 million in 2022.

The steps are easy and have been laid out for Biden in detail in a report by the Congressional Research Service. Biden could free all cannabis prisoners with a single signature by utilizing Executive Action. He could clear up the muddy, regulatory, cash-only waters of the state-by-state market by enacting Federal decriminalization or helping advance the SAFER Banking Act. He could single-handedly help reduce the opioid epidemic in the U.S. He could change the lives of his constituents for the better.

Biden could offer an entire generation of passionate, innovative business owners access to the same American Dream he has accessed. By taking more drastic steps towards legalization across the country, the president could begin to repair the damages done by the War on Drugs.

It’s ironic. After all these years of criminalizing it, weed is going to save President Biden.