US President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 2500 non-violent drug offenders on Friday, marking the highest number of pardons and commutations issued by a president in US history.

Biden said he commuted the sentences because he saw them as disproportionately long for the sentences the offenders would have received today given the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 and the First Step Act of 2018. He explained that the hefty sentences were due to the “discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, as well as outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes.”

The Fair Sentencing Act significantly reduced the disparity in sentencing between the ownership of powder cocaine and crack cocaine established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Possession of crack cocaine used to carry the same penalty as possession of 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine. The act also eliminated the mandatory minimum sentence of five years imprisonment for possession.

The First Step Act applied the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively by allowing individuals sentenced for crack cocaine possession before the act’s passage to request courts to reduce their sentence. The act also reduced the enhanced minimum penalty for a second serious drug felony violation from 20 years imprisonment to 15 years imprisonment and for a third violation from life imprisonment to 25 years imprisonment.

Biden’s clemency pushes back against the federal government’s War on Drugs launched by then-President Richard Nixon during the 1970s. The War on Drugs is the federal government’s strategy for combating drug addiction by the force of criminal penalties.

The Sentencing Project’s Executive Director Kara Gotsch released a statement approving of Biden’s clemency:

Today’s commutations from President Biden are a welcome relief for countless families who have endured punishments for their loved ones that far exceed their utility … American communities, disproportionately Black and Brown, have long borne the scars of the Drug War. Extreme and racist sentences for crack cocaine offenses tore apart families.

The ACLU published a press release supporting the clemency, but also stressing ongoing issues with cocaine laws: “The disparity between crack and powder cocaine remains 18:1, despite the substances being chemically identical. Congress must act swiftly to pass the bipartisan EQUAL Act, which would end the disparity once and for all.”