PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana in federal court elicited celebration from Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, who has long advocated for legalizing the drug, and silence from his Republican challenger, Mehmet Oz.
Fetterman called the announcement a “a massive step toward justice,” and claimed some credit. He’d pressed Biden on the issue when they both marched in the Pittsburgh Labor Day parade.
“When I heard President Biden would be in Pittsburgh a month ago, I knew that if I had a chance to sit down with him, I would use that opportunity to talk about the need to decriminalize marijuana,” Fetterman said in a statement released moments after Biden’s announcement. “And that’s exactly what I did. People’s lives should not be derailed because of minor, nonviolent marijuana-related offenses.”
Fetterman said “too many lives — and lives of Black and brown Americans in particular — have been derailed by this criminalization of this plant.”
A spokesperson for Oz responded with a statement Thursday that made no mention of Biden, marijuana or Oz’s stance on Biden’s move. It instead attacked Fetterman over previous statements about other drugs. Asked about the issue again Friday the Oz campaign responded with a similar statement.
In May, during the Republican primary, Oz expressed opposition to legalizing marijuana, suggesting it could prevent people from seeking work.
“I don’t want to breed addiction to marijuana,” he said on Newsmax in May. “It’s not physical addiction, it’s emotional addiction. We need to get Pennsylvanians back at work. We’ve gotta give them their mojo, and I don’t want marijuana to be a hindrance to that. I also don’t want people operating heavy machinery and driving by me when they’ve taken their fourth joint of the day.”
But Oz has sounded more open to at least medical marijuana in past interviews before running for political office. He called marijuana “one of the most underused tools in America,” in a 2020 interview with rapper Fatman Scoop on Instagram. Oz said in that interview, “I’m hoping the federal government, at some point someone’s going to say, ‘Come on. This is a farce. Open it up for the entire country.’ That way the right people can begin to prescribe it.”
He also told the rapper he supported removing marijuana from the list of Schedule I drugs, which according to the Drug Enforcement Agency means it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”
The Oz statement on Friday did not address questions asking to clarify his views.
Fetterman’s camp has increasingly called out Oz for refusing to take firm positions on a range of major public policy questions.
And Democrats have cast the celebrity surgeon as someone who changes his views based on what serves him best in the moment.
Oz has made a large part of his campaign attacking Fetterman for his work on the Board of Pardons, advocacy for legalized weed and support of supervised injection sites, calling him too radical.
He has criticized Fetterman for as recently as 2020 supporting moves to decriminalize all drugs, and blasted Fetterman for recently attempting to narrow that position, by saying he would not do so for “hard drugs.”
Fetterman has been a longtime advocate for marijuana legalization. He did a legalization tour of the state when he became lieutenant governor and hung a marijuana leaf flag outside the Capitol building until the Legislature passed a law banning flags not approved by lawmakers from flying at the state Capitol. Fetterman has also made legalizing marijuana a prominent part of his Senate campaign.
In August, Fetterman and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf launched a monthlong pardon program inviting people who had been convicted of possession of marijuana to apply for a pardon. The governor’s office estimated that thousands of Pennsylvanians were eligible for the program, which stopped accepting applications Sept. 30.
———
