During his meeting with President Joe Biden over Labor Day in Pennsylvania, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman pushed for the decriminalisation of marijuana.
The candidate, according to Fetterman’s team, would approach Biden about the matter when they met on Monday in Pittsburgh.
The two men met in secret to talk about the subject before giving their remarks to the local United Steelworkers of America branch.
According to campaign communications director Joe Calvello, throughout the call, Fetterman “continued to push for the President to utilise his executive power to begin the process of rescheduling marijuana, so that persons convicted of nonviolent crimes may move on with their lives.”
In his Senate campaign against Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee backed by Donald Trump, Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, has made legalising marijuana a central issue.
According to surveys, most Pennsylvanians favour decriminalisation.
The problem also gives Fetterman a chance to compare himself to Biden. He’s been wary of sharing the platform with the president, like many Democratic contenders this time. However, on Labor Day, Fetterman joined Biden after missing his appearances in Wilkes-Barre and Philadelphia the previous week.
Biden originally opposed marijuana legalisation in its entirety, but during the 2020 presidential race, he changed his position to favour decriminalisation.
According to the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “President Biden feels that there are too many individuals serving unnecessarily lengthy terms for minor drug crimes—a disproportionate number of whom are black and brown.”
Biden, according to her, regards it as a state problem.
“The President supports rescheduling cannabis as a Schedule II drug so researchers can study its positive and negative impacts. At the federal level, he supports decriminalising marijuana use and automatically expunging any prior criminal records,” she said. “The President supports leaving decisions regarding legalisation for recreational use up to the states.”
More than 70 individuals convicted of marijuana-related offences received clemency orders from Biden in April.
However, the Biden administration has not made any progress in reclassifying the medicine at the federal level.
Decriminalization is not something Oz agrees with, and Fetterman has come under fire for it.
Meanwhile, Biden is campaigning for the Democrats.
On Labor Day, the president visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Milwaukee, Wisconsin to encourage union members, one of the Democrats’ most ardent supporters.
The election season traditionally begins on Labor Day. In an effort to aid his party in keeping control of the House and the Senate, Biden is anticipated to be quite active on the campaign road.
The governor’s and Senate elections in November are both fiercely contested in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Biden will visit Ohio, another swing state, on Friday to celebrate the opening of an Intel facility. Tim Ryan, a Democrat running for the Senate, has said he would attend.
According to a Gallup poll issued late last week, Biden’s poll ratings have increased to his highest point of the year, 44 percent, and he is now feeling good.
From August 1 to 23, while U.S. adults were being polled, Biden recovered from COVID-19 and a rebound infection, killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, and signed the Inflation Reduction Act.
Americans are feeling better about certain economic statistics, such as the drop in gas prices. Voters have voiced dissatisfaction with Biden as the cost of living increased due to record-high inflation.
Candidates were hesitant to accompany the president because of Biden’s poor support rating and voters’ worries about his economic policies.