Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max It’s well established that President Biden is an outlier among Democrats when it comes to weed. During the 2020 election, he stood apart from the vast field of presidential contenders in stopping short of endorsing marijuana legalization. Polling shows thatmore than 80 percent of Democrats support that position. But Biden did endorse major changes to cannabis policy on the campaign trail. Most notably, he stated at an event in New Hampshire:“Nobody should be in jail for smoking marijuana.” Biden also expressed support for moving marijuana from Schedule I — the strictest classification — to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act, which would make it easier to conduct research into marijuana’s potential medicinal uses. So, what has Biden done to deliver on those policy preferences in the 14 months since taking office? “So far, we've seen nothing from the president in terms of what he promised to deliver on,” said the Brookings Institution’s JOHN HUDAK , who has written extensively about cannabis policy and executive branch authority, “nor an effort to work with Congress actively to try to advance legislative ideas that follow the same path.” In fact, the Biden administration’s only notable cannabis moves hardly amount to a loosening of restrictions. Last March, the Daily Beast reported thatdozens of White House staffers were punished for past marijuana use. And earlier this month, POLITICO reported that job applicants were being warned that even investing in a marijuana company could hurt their chances of working for the administration. The executive actions available to Biden if he really wants to change federal cannabis policy are pretty simple, as laid out ina recent report by the Congressional Research Service . He could direct the attorney general, in consultation with the Health and Human Services secretary, to begin the process of changing the classification of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. In addition, he could use his pardon power to grant clemency to people with marijuana-related convictions. In fact, he could even wipe out convictions for a whole class of offenders at one time with the swipe of a pen. Hudak points to one precedent for this: President GERALD FORD’s granting of conditional amnesty to Vietnam War draft dodgers. There’s at least some indication that the administration is thinking about weed. One cannabis industry official — speaking anonymously in order to detail a private conversation — told WWP that they met with Domestic Policy Council senior adviser ERIN MURPHY in late December to discuss potential cannabis policy changes. Murphyjoined the Biden administration in September from NYU Law as a senior policy adviser on criminal justice issues. She referred an inquiry from WWP about the December meeting to the administration’s communications shop, which declined to confirm that it took place. In addition, no other weed companies that POLITICO has spoken to recently reported similar meetings. In response to questions about the administration’s cannabis policies, a spokesperson for the Office of National Drug Control Policy pointed to recent remarks by press secretary JEN PSAKI: “The president supports leaving decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the states,” she said, “rescheduling cannabis as a Schedule II drug so researchers can study its positive and negative impacts and, at the federal level, he supports decriminalizing marijuana use and automatically expunging any prior criminal records.” The spokesperson also pointed to steps the administration has taken to expand marijuana research, including granting more licenses to grow marijuana for research purposes. What accounts for Biden’s weed reticence? That’s difficult to say with any certainty, but there’s certainly some reasonable hypotheses that can be drawn. For starters: He’s a septuagenarian. And polling consistently shows a large generation gap in support for legalization, with older voters less likely to back that stance. Secondly, he’s a veteran of the drug wars, having spent decades in Congress backing legislation enacting tough criminal penalties for drug use. Thirdly, his own son’swell-documented struggles with addiction undoubtedly color how he sees the issue. To be fair, few Americans would rank marijuana policy as a top-tier priority for the Biden administration, especially at a time when it’s navigating a pandemic that continues to kill more than 1,000 Americans a day, the highest inflation rate in forty years and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In addition, it’s been a mere 14 months since Biden took office, leaving plenty of time to tackle weed policy in his first term. But Hudak argues that the short list of options when it comes to executive action on marijuana policy means that there’s little excuse for failing to make any progress on the positions Biden laid out on the campaign trail. “This White House can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said. “The administration has just chosen not to do that. This is a purposeful decision by the administration to ignore this.” TEXT US — Are you a Biden administration job applicant who was nixed for past drug use? We want to hear from you (we’ll keep you anonymous). Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr/WhatsApp Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427. | 
