This week, a women’s basketball star was sentenced to 9 years in jail in Russia for having a cannabis hashish oil vape in her luggage by accident. The US Government under President Biden offered to do a prisoner swap for Vikto Bout, a Russian arms dealer known as the “merchant of death.”
Brittney Griner, 31 years old, plays professional basketball in Russia during the WNBA offseason and was arrested in February at a Russian airport on accusations that she was smuggling vape cartridges with cannabis oil. In closing arguments, Russian prosecutors asked the courts to sentence Brittney Griner to 9 and half years in prison and a 1 million ruble fine.
Griner said following closing arguments, “I never meant to hurt anybody.”
President Biden calls the Brittney Griner Case “Unacceptable.”
In a statement on Thursday, President Biden called the prison sentence “unacceptable.”
In 2017, in the United States, 92 people were sentenced for simple marijuana possession. The USA also has the largest prison population in the world. At the federal level of the DOJ, there were 81,900 prisoners serving jail sentences for non-violent drug offences.
Getting nine years in jail anywhere for a simple cannabis offence is disgraceful. But why is Brittney so much more special than any of these other people sitting in jail right now over past cannabis offences? Right now, in the USA, US citizens are sitting and rotting their lives away in a cage for cannabis.
Currently, in the US Senate, there is a bill to legalize cannabis federally that is not likely to pass.
Swapping a Violent Criminal for Brittney Griner
All the while, the Biden Administration is trying to swap a known violent Russian criminal for Brittney Griner. The strangest part of all this is you can still get a criminal record in most southern US states for the exact same thing: possession of Hash oil.
On Sunday, Elon Musk tweeted that we should maybe be letting some non-violent marijuana offenders go into the US before we start trading violent criminals back to Russia.
People in Prison right now for Non-Violent Cannabis Crimes
It is far past the time that the US government frees these people in jail for cannabis-related crimes. Biden has been president for almost two years now; what has his administration done to legalize cannabis in his own country? What have they done to keep cannabis users out of jail in 2022?
This president has done nothing in regard to cannabis policies; why is that? Between President Biden and President Obama, they have done nothing on the US Federal front to change marijuana laws.
To say that Griner’s sentence is “unacceptable” when there are so many families in the US right now suffering the same fate is nothing more than complete hypocrisy by President Biden.
Set an example for the Russian government and release all non-violent cannabis offenders in the USA.
Disclaimer: https://www.cannabisnews.org/united-states-cannabis-news/brittney-griner-russia-hash-oil/
Posted by: Times Of Hemp, TOH, #TOH, #TimesOfHemp
