Eighty percent.

On March third, 2026, eighty percent of Texas Democratic primary voters approved a ballot measure calling for marijuana legalization and automatic expungement of prior convictions. Eighty percent. In Texas. The largest red state in the union. Not a close vote. Not a squeaker. Not a bare majority that could be explained away by turnout or demographics. Eighty percent.

I did ten years for two joints of marijuana in the state of Michigan in 1969. The judge sentenced me to nine and a half to ten years in the state prison at Jackson. For two joints. The state spent more money prosecuting me and incarcerating me than I had earned in my entire life up to that point. John Lennon wrote a song to get me out. Fifteen thousand people showed up at a rally. Three days later I was free. Not because the law changed. Because the politics changed. The law did not change for another fifty years.

That is the number I want you to hold in your head. Not eighty percent. Fifty years. Fifty years between the moment the public said this is wrong and the moment the law agreed. Fifty years of people sitting in prison for a plant while the polls moved and the politicians waited and the states ran their experiments and the dispensaries opened and the tax revenue came in and finally — finally — the government said what everybody already knew.

Trump signed an executive order in December directing the Attorney General to reclassify marijuana from Schedule One to Schedule Three. Schedule One is heroin. Schedule Three is Tylenol with codeine. The order sounds like progress. The order is not progress. The order is a press release. The actual reclassification requires formal rulemaking, public comment, an administrative hearing. The legal experts say it is not happening any time soon. The headline says one thing. The reality says another. That is how this works. That is how this has always worked. The government announces that the thing you already knew is true, and then spends five years confirming that it knew the thing you already knew.

Eighty percent of Texas voters want legalization and automatic expungement. Automatic. That is the word that matters. Not legalization alone. Expungement. Which means: if you went to prison for marijuana, your record gets cleared. Automatically. Without a lawyer. Without a petition. Without a fee. Without asking permission from the system that locked you up in the first place.

I did not get automatic expungement. I got a pardon. Biden pardoned me. Trump rescinded it. The pardon went away. The conviction is back. The sentence was served fifty years ago and the record is still not clear. That is what eighty percent is up against. Not the twenty percent who said no. The system that takes fifty years to process what eighty percent already decided.

Eighty percent of Texas. Think about that. Texas. Where the drug war was gospel. Where mandatory minimums were invented. Where three strikes meant life. Where the prison system is an industry and the industry does not want its raw material decriminalized. Eighty percent of Texas said yes. And the law has not changed. And people are still in prison. And the records are still there. And the system is still processing.

I did ten years for two joints. If I had done it in Texas in 2026, eighty percent of the voters would say I should not have gone to prison. But I would still be in prison. Because eighty percent is not a law. Eighty percent is an opinion. And the distance between an opinion and a law is where people serve their time.

The math has changed. The sentence has not been corrected.

See also: Ten for Two — two joints, ten years, the sentence that started everything. The Pardon — Biden pardoned. Trump rescinded. The sentence rewrites itself. The Dispensary — they sell what they arrested me for. The Trial — the courtroom where they set the price at ten years. They Legalized It and Forgot — the dispensary does not know my name. Country Joe — the FBI opened a file on a man with a guitar. The Vote — Peel on the same ballot. The song outlived the law. The Copyright — the system decides who owns what. The signal is free. The Schedule — Schedule One to Schedule Three. A cage to a leash. The Names — Porter. Good. Pretti. The state creates the reason for the protest. The Gun — Texas votes to legalize. The Supreme Court asks if the plant cancels a right.

Source: Marijuana Moment, March 2026.