Dear President Joe Biden,

We’ll start this letter with the due disclaimer that we’re not sure if we disliked your presidential campaign or if we just dislike you as a person. Regardless, that aforementioned campaign hinted upon certain national changes that Americans could anticipate if they voted for you, and much to our chagrin and to the chagrin of any level-headed 20-something, millions of us Americans showed up to the polls with wary eyes and sighs stored deep within our lungs as we picked up our ballots and collectively said, “Goddamn it, fine.”

So if you’re going to slowly continue to run this country into the ground, the least you could do is make marijuana the lowest priority for law enforcement on a national level. In other words: We voted for you, Joe. Where’s our decriminalized cannabis, you lying dog-faced pony soldier?

Indeed, there are a plethora of arguments on the internet in favor of legalizing or decriminalizing cannabis. There are so many arguments, in fact, that we are beginning to suspect that you can’t read.

We could tell you how legalized cannabis is great for the economy, or how it should be considered as medicine, or how the war on drugs actually has more to do with racial dynamics than it has anything to do with actual substances.

We could tell you how recent surveys point towards nine-in-ten Americans being in favor of legalization, or how 17 states and D.C. have already legalized cannabis, with 36 states legalizing medical cannabis.

But hell, you’re the President of the United States, so surely you know all of that already, right?

To say we compromised on you as a presidential leader is to do a disservice to anyone we ever actually came to an agreement with. The more appropriate term, it would seem, is “settled.” You know, as in, “America settled for its latest president the same way we settle for Budweiser when the liquor store is out of Coors, or how our girlfriends are currently settling for us.”

In case we haven’t made the point incredibly clear, we didn’t ask for this. In fact, we were secretly hoping that 2021 was going to be the year that we dug up our streets for community gardens and brought back putting corrupt public officials in stocks so as to hurl violent insults and rocks at them.

Alas, maybe next year.

Don’t get us wrong—we hear through the grapevine that you’re doing some things especially well. For instance, “At least he isn’t Donald Trump,” is a commonplace phrase in the circles we run in. But you understand how this isn’t a compliment, right? Do you see how “At least he isn’t playing golf in Florida or distributing false election information via twitter” is kind of the bare minimum for the President of the United States?

You know what could be an even better compliment for the 46th President of the United States? How about, “Wow, even though Joe Biden introduced the Comprehensive Narcotics Control Act in 1986 and later sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1993, essentially aiding and abetting the useless war on drugs, it’s nice to know he came to his senses decades later and went on to decriminalize a plant that has inefficiently been persecuted for decades.

Pointing fingers and drawing attention to presidential shortcomings is certainly very easy, and we’d imagine that at this point in our verbally abrasive letter you’re probably hoping for us to present some kind of solution, right?

The solution is actually a simple one: We just need you to do the thing that you said you were going to do during your 2020 presidential campaign, and, in case you forgot, that thing was decriminalizing cannabis and expunging petty marijuana convictions.

It’s not a huge ask. We aren’t asking you to implement a banking system for already legalized areas, or work with the FDA to standardize cannabis products.

We aren’t asking you to fully legalize cannabis on a federal level. In fact, we’re waiting on our other presidential overlord Amazon to help us out with that one. 

When you run a presidential campaign and hang certain promises over prospective voter’s heads, only to sweep those campaign promises under the rug when you enter office and later go on to give the excuse of “we don’t have time given the pandemic,” well, that’s called “Takesies Backsies” and even a first grader could tell you it’s generally regarded as a low move.

This ball is in your metaphorical court, Mr. President. Our hopes are high.