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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bunjelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os It's Monday,

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Speaker 2: the tenth of October. I'm Sam, I'm Zara. At the

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Speaker 2: end of last week, US President Joe Biden announced he

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Speaker 2: would pardon anyone convicted of possessing small amounts of cannabis

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Speaker 2: at the federal level. Activists are speculating this could be

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Speaker 2: the green light for eventually decriminalizing or even legalizing cannabis

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Speaker 2: in America. We'll explain what Biden has actually done and

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Speaker 2: what the next steps will be, But first, Sarah, what

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Speaker 2: is making headlines today.

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Speaker 3: The Australian Defense Force is working with New South Wales

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Speaker 3: Emergency Services to assist residents in New South Wales as

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Speaker 3: heavy rainfall and flash flooding continues to hit the state.

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Speaker 3: Emergency services are most focused on areas in western New

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Speaker 3: South Wales, including Bathist, Mudgi and Dubbo, with the Bureau

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Speaker 3: of Meteorology warning another severe weather system just as bad

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Speaker 3: is destined to hit the state on Wednesday.

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Speaker 2: The only bridge between the Russian mainland and Crimea, which

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Speaker 2: is one of Russia's annexed territories, has been partially destroyed

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Speaker 2: by what Russian authorities say was a truck bomb. Ukraine

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Speaker 2: has not directly claimed responsibility, but a Ukrainian presidential advisor

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Speaker 2: posted a message on Twitter calling the explosion quote the beginning.

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Speaker 3: We're just simply full of good news today. North Korea

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Speaker 3: has fired two more ballistic missiles, makeing them the seventh

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Speaker 3: and eighth missiles in fourteen days, it comes to South Korea,

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Speaker 3: and the US conducted a round of military exercises. North

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Speaker 3: Korean state media said the missile tests are quote normal

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Speaker 3: planned self defense measures to protect our country security and

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Speaker 3: regional peace from direct US military threats.

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Speaker 2: And now I've got some actual good news for everybody

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Speaker 2: to start off your week. Chris Nikich has become the

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Speaker 2: first athlete with down syndrome to finish the Ironman World

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Speaker 2: Championships in Hawaii. Nikich finished the two hundred and twenty

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Speaker 2: six kilometer race in sixteen hours on what was also

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Speaker 2: his twenty third birthday. After the race, Nikich said quote,

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Speaker 2: I want to open doors and I want to raise awareness.

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Speaker 2: Anyone who sees people with Down syndrome, don't look away

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Speaker 2: or walk away.

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Speaker 3: President Joe Biden's announcement that he was going to initiate

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Speaker 3: a mass pardon for anyone who had a pass conviction

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Speaker 3: of possessing a bit of cannabis is a big deal.

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Speaker 3: But before we get into what this will mean four

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Speaker 3: people who have a cannabis possession conviction on their record, Sam,

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Speaker 3: could you actually just explain what a pardon is in

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Speaker 3: the first case.

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Speaker 2: So, the ability to pardon people convicted of federal crimes

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Speaker 2: is to me one of the most interesting things that

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Speaker 2: the US president can do. It's kind of like they

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Speaker 2: have the power to undo a court's decision to find

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Speaker 2: someone guilty, even decades after the fact. It's granted to

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Speaker 2: them by the US Constitution, and it's a pretty broad power.

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Speaker 2: Almost every president has pardoned at least one person in

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Speaker 2: their time, for better or for worse. Bill Clinton used

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Speaker 2: the presidential pardon to clear his brother Roger of a

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Speaker 2: past conviction for cocaine possession, Gerald Ford cleared Richard Nixon's

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Speaker 2: name of corruption, and even George Washington way back when

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Speaker 2: pardoned a few men convicted for their role in a

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Speaker 2: rebellion against taxes in the seventeen nineties. But mass pardons

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Speaker 2: are not individuals like the one Biden has just announced,

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Speaker 2: are much rarer. Pardoning a bunch of people who've all

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Speaker 2: been convicted of the same is a huge decision, and

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Speaker 2: there aren't that many groups that it could conceivably apply to. Now.

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Speaker 2: The biggest and most recent example that I could think

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Speaker 2: of is from the late seventies, and that was when

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Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter cleared thousands of men convicted of dodging the

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Speaker 2: draft for the Vietnam War, and that was one of

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Speaker 2: the things he did on his first day in office

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Speaker 2: as president.

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Speaker 3: It was quite the American history you got going on there.

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Speaker 2: It's a really interesting part of the way a president

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Speaker 2: can operate, and it was in the headlines a lot

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Speaker 2: with President Trump, because of course he wanted to try

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Speaker 2: and pardon himself. Now Biden has used that power to

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Speaker 2: pardon thousands of people convicted of possessing small amounts of cannabis.

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Speaker 2: He also called on individual US state governors to do

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Speaker 2: the same thing.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so now let's go to what the crime at

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Speaker 3: the center of this decision actually is. Can you take

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Speaker 3: us through what a simple possession actually means?

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Speaker 2: So basically, simple possession is what an American can be

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Speaker 2: charged with if they're found to be holding on to

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Speaker 2: a small quantity of cannabis for personal use, and personal

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Speaker 2: use has a whole legal connotation to it. If the

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Speaker 2: amount of cannabis looks more than just a small quantity,

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Speaker 2: that's when you can be charged with things like intent

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Speaker 2: to distribute. Now, for a first offense, you'll typically get

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Speaker 2: away with a misdemeanor, which is a low level conviction,

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Speaker 2: a slap on the wrist. But if you're convicted again,

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Speaker 2: that's when you start to enter felony territory. Felonies are

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Speaker 2: hugely serious under US law. Even as recently as twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 2: anyone convicted of a felony could not legally vote in

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Speaker 2: the state of Florida, even if they'd already completed their sentence,

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Speaker 2: and the punishments for felonies extend all the way up

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Speaker 2: to the death penalty. But there's a whole nother factor

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Speaker 2: at play here are a funky bit of legal layering.

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Speaker 2: So quite a few US states have decriminalized or even

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Speaker 2: legalized recreational use of cannabis, but it's still a crime

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Speaker 2: at a federal level, where the drug is still treated

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Speaker 2: as a controlled substance. So what that really means is that,

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Speaker 2: and this is unlikely, if you're a recreational or men

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Speaker 2: call cannabis consumer in illegal states like the state of

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Speaker 2: New York, in the eyes of the US government, you're

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Speaker 2: still committing a crime and you could be convicted of

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Speaker 2: simple possession under federal law.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So with that context set, how many people will

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Speaker 3: Biden's decision actually affect?

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Speaker 2: In reality, this decision is going to impact anyone who

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Speaker 2: has a federal charge for simple possession of cannabis on

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Speaker 2: their criminal record going back as far as the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 2: White House officials reckon that since nineteen ninety two, about

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Speaker 2: six and a half thousand people have been convicted of this,

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Speaker 2: but the estimates aren't really clear. When a member of

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Speaker 2: President Biden's administration got up at the White House last

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Speaker 2: week to explain the decision, they highlighted that, in their words,

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Speaker 2: black and brown people are disproportionately in jail for it.

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Speaker 2: This is despite, as the President says, white people using

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Speaker 2: cannabis at similar rates to those groups.

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Speaker 3: We'll be back in just a moment, but first a

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Speaker 3: message from our sponsor. I think the big question on

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Speaker 3: everybody's lips is, does Biden's decision now mean that cannabis

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Speaker 3: will be decriminalized or taking a step further even legalized

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Speaker 3: soon across the board in the US.

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Speaker 2: It's definitely a possibility in the future, but not right now.

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Speaker 2: The next step that Biden wants to take is to

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Speaker 2: investigate whether cannabis should continue to be classified as a

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Speaker 2: Schedule one drug. And that's how the Drug Enforcement Administration

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Speaker 2: describes drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a

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Speaker 2: high potential for abuse, and that includes things like heroin

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Speaker 2: and ecstasy as well. And that's really interesting because there's

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Speaker 2: plenty of governments, including some US states, that accept that

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Speaker 2: cannabis has medical benefits.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so if there's not this mass movement towards the

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Speaker 3: decriminalization at a federal level of cannabis, why did Biden

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Speaker 3: make a move on this now of all times?

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Speaker 2: We do have to think about this in the context

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Speaker 2: of the US political calendar.

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Speaker 3: I think every story we do on the US ends

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Speaker 3: on this note.

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Speaker 2: And we have to talk about the midterms. That's when

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Speaker 2: Americans will go to vote for new senators and local representatives,

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Speaker 2: and it's only about five weeks away. Now, midterms are

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Speaker 2: typically seen as a kind of opinion poll on the

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Speaker 2: current president. If the current president's party, the Democrats, lose

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Speaker 2: a lot of seats, then it's a clear indictment that

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Speaker 2: American people don't have faith in the current president. So

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Speaker 2: a big call like this to wipe thousands of people's

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Speaker 2: criminal records clean over minor offense could mean lots of

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Speaker 2: votes for those people and their families and for the

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Speaker 2: many Americans who support the decriminalization of cannabis. However, there's

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Speaker 2: always another reaction, and that is that it could alienate

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Speaker 2: more hardline anti drug activists. Now, this is a really

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Speaker 2: big move for President Biden. Specifically, Biden's years in the

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Speaker 2: Senate changed the face of the prison system in America.

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Speaker 2: He pushed for changes, including mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses,

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Speaker 2: and in the nineteen nineties, he was known for having

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Speaker 2: a really hardline approach to crime. He was famous for

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Speaker 2: quotes like lock thow those sons of bitches up about

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Speaker 2: people who'd committed crimes and said, it doesn't matter whether

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Speaker 2: or not they're the victims of society. I don't want

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Speaker 2: to ask what made them do this. They must be

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Speaker 2: taken off the streets.

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Speaker 3: So fair beit of a U turn from the president, then.

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Speaker 2: It's definitely a change in tone. It's been in the

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Speaker 2: works for a while, including during his presidential run in

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Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, but this is clearly the biggest sign that

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Speaker 2: he's changed his position on drug offenses since he was

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Speaker 2: first elected way back in the seventies.

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Speaker 3: Moving along from the fact that the current president was

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Speaker 3: first elected in the nineteen seventies, if we zoom out

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Speaker 3: from the US, you said that lots of Americans support

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Speaker 3: decriminalizing cannabis. Do we understand anything about the level of

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Speaker 3: support here in Australia.

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Speaker 2: Zara Weather Daelios. So we understand, we are we understand

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Speaker 2: what people think because we asked them, and we recently

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Speaker 2: asked our readers how they feel about the potential decriminalization

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Speaker 2: of cannabis for personal use.

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Speaker 3: Can you just contextualize why it was that we asked

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Speaker 3: this question.

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Speaker 2: So federal Green's sent that David Shubridge said he'd received

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Speaker 2: legal advice that there was potentially a way to legalize

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Speaker 2: cannabis at the national level. And so twenty eight hundred

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Speaker 2: TDA readers responded to our caller and the results were

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Speaker 2: really interesting. Of the people who responded, eighty seven percent

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Speaker 2: said recreational cannabis should be legalized in Australia and ninety

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Speaker 2: percent said the possession of small amounts of at least

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Speaker 2: some illicit drugs should be decriminalized. So in our audience

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Speaker 2: at least there is strong support for a proposal like

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Speaker 2: Joe Biden's, but we will have to wait and see

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Speaker 2: if anything actually comes of that. Here at home, it.

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Speaker 3: Is certainly an interesting one. Thank you for joining us

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Speaker 3: on the Daily OS and it is an exciting day

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Speaker 3: for us here at TDA. We're going to throw nowt

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Speaker 3: to a little teaser of our new podcast that dropped

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Speaker 3: this morning. It's called The Mirror. It's hosted by our

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Speaker 3: editor Billy fitz Simon's and it's really something. You can

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Speaker 3: listen to episode one and subscribe to the show at

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Speaker 3: the link in our show notes. And now to The Mirror.

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Speaker 4: Julia Gillard's misogyny speech.

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Speaker 3: I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by

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Speaker 3: this man.

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Speaker 4: The moment, Australia's first female Prime minister, the only female

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Speaker 4: prime minister we've had, stood up and said enough.

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Speaker 2: I will not not now, not ever.

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Speaker 4: During that fifteen minute speech, her fury at the former

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Speaker 4: Opposition leader Tony Abbott was visceral.

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Speaker 2: Misogyny, sexism every day from this leader of the Opposition.

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Speaker 4: But this speech was in response to more than just

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Speaker 4: one man.

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Speaker 2: Do all this stuff about her wardrobe and her appearance.

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Speaker 2: The language was a whore in a whorehouse.

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Speaker 3: Would be placed in a chast bag and thrown out

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Speaker 3: to sea until ditch the witch. July when Gillard said

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Speaker 3: enough that day, it wasn't just Abbot.

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Speaker 1: She put on notice on.

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Speaker 3: Your succession, scenes, your mortal status, your ear lobes, it

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Speaker 3: was all of us. Misogyny looks like in modl Australia.

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Speaker 4: From the Daily Ours, I'm Billy fitz Simon's this is

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Speaker 4: the mirrors I hear