The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), alongside a cohort of businesspeople and activists teamed up to urge President Joe Biden to make good on his campaign promises. Specifically, his promise to expunge the criminal records of individuals who have been convicted of non-violent marijuana charges.

A letter sent to the White House this Presidents’ Day reminded President Biden of the statements he had made during his road to the presidency. The letter focused on his intent to clean the records of Americans with marijuana convictions. During a primary debate in November of 2019, Biden remarked, “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think everyone – anyone who has a record – should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.”

In the correspondence to the President, NORML highlighted how cannabis convictions have historically affected minority groups more severely. It went on to remind President Biden of his statements regarding racial equality. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order that said, “Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face.” The letter reinforced this by stating the following, “Today, the long-term harm of cannabis prohibition in communities of color throughout the country is profound. As we look to solutions to provide healing, the dangerous policing tactics that were developed to execute the war on marijuana, including no-knock warrants and other aggressive tactics, shock the nation and have led us to historic levels of mistrust.”

If President Biden were to follow through on his remarks about equity and expunging the records of those who have committed non-violent cannabis related crime, the outcome would be a monumental president for criminal justice. The last year has been extremely progressive regarding cannabis law and regulation. It only seems fit for criminal justice reform to be a priority on the agenda of the powers that be.

In the recent past, buying weed meant meeting a friend of a friend in the back-parking lot of a supermarket only to be left waiting for hours, hoping your herbs would arrive. But now things are changing with the option to buy publicly traded, NASDAQ stock of a multi-billion-dollar Canadian pot conglomerate. Tilray and Aphria, two of Canada’s largest cannabis companies are set to create the worlds largest cannabis corporation with a combined estimated market value of 3.9 billion dollars and have intentions of finding their space in the ever-growing U.S cannabis market.

Both companies have already started their moves into the largest global cannabis market independently of each other. Manitoba Harvest, a Tilray powered CBD company is already offering products in the United States and Aphria recently purchased a southern based craft beer company, SweetWater Brewing, for the price of $300 million dollars. The purchase of the beer company likely will serve as a base for a transition into cannabis sales in the United States.

Tilray CEO Brendan Kennedy is hopeful for the future of legal cannabis and believes it soon will be traded both Statewide and internationally. He thinks that by 2022 people can expect cannabis to be traded like alcohol and that the state specific brands and markets will soon be a thing of the past. For the time being cannabis remains federally illegal in the U.S and it appears it will remain that way for the immediate future under the incoming Biden white house. Although Biden leans towards decriminalization he has not made it explicitly clear that he has any intentions of heading towards federal legalization. A lot is left to be seen for the future of mega cannabis conglomerations and how they are to fair in an ever opening, yet restricted marketplace.