In 2004, Weldon Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling $900 worth of weed. That's what you get for bringing some of the earliest hip-hop shows to Salt Lake City, Utah.

A music producer who has worked with legends like Snoop Dogg, Tupac's Outlawz, Nas, and Pink,, Weldon's case became a symbol of the racism and injustice that plagues our criminal justice system.

But as you'll hear in this interview, from the moment he arrived at a maximum security prison—to serve a virtual life sentence—he began advocating for himself and other non-violent cannabis prisoners. Now head of The Weldon Project, he's built a truly bi-partisan coalition—Cory Booker, Rand Paul, Charles Koch, Alicia Keys—that pushed President Barrack Obama to commute his sentence in 2016, followed by a full pardon from President Donald Trump in December 2020.

In September, Weldon sent the Biden administration a letter signed by more than 150 celebrities (Drake, Killer Mike, 2 Chainz, Ty Dolla $ign, T.I.), athletes, politicians, law enforcement professionals and academics calling on the President to issue a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to all people with non-violent federal marijuana convictions.

For more on what the current administration is—and isn't—doing about cannabis, check out our recent interview with Representative Earl Blumenauer, one of the leading marijuana legalization voices in congress, in an episode titled "Is Biden Gonna Legalize or What?"

PATREON

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