The endorsement is the newest building in Harris’s career-long evolving positions on marijuana coverage.
For the primary time since changing into the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated her toughen for legalizing marijuana on the federal degree, going additional at the factor than President Joe Biden.
All over a just about hourlong interview at the sports activities and tradition podcast “The entire Smoke” that aired on Sept. 30, Harris mentioned she believes “we have now come to some degree the place we need to keep in mind that we wish to legalize it and prevent criminalizing conduct.”
“I simply really feel strongly other folks will have to no longer be going to prison for smoking weed,” Harris instructed hosts Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes.
“And we all know traditionally what that has supposed and who has long past to prison.”
Even if Harris mentioned supporting legalization is “no longer a brand new place for me” and that she has “felt for a very long time [that] we wish to legalize it,” her place on marijuana has modified since her early profession.
All over a 2019 Democratic presidential debate, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard criticized Harris for aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related offenses as San Francisco’s district lawyer and later as lawyer basic of California.
In 2010, Harris antagonistic the state’s Proposition 19, a poll measure that attempted and did not legalize leisure marijuana.
It wasn’t till Proposition 64 in 2016 that Californians over the age of 21 had get admission to to marijuana with out a clinical analysis and state-issued card.
Whilst the Biden management has been the primary to transport towards reclassifying marijuana—which will be the most important exchange in many years of drug coverage from the chief department—he has no longer long past so far as backing complete legalization.
Former President Donald Trump’s positions on marijuana have shifted as neatly.
Whilst he not too long ago counseled Florida’s Modification 3—a poll initiative to legalize leisure marijuana for adults over 21—his management rescinded the Obama-era Cole Memorandum, which had directed federal prosecutors to not pursue marijuana felony offenses in states the place it’s prison underneath state regulation.
Then-White Area press secretary Sean Spicer mentioned in February 2017 that the Justice Division would see a “higher enforcement” of federal rules referring to leisure marijuana.
In 2024, then again, Trump has supported the Biden management’s efforts to reclassify marijuana as a Agenda III drug.
When he counseled Florida’s marijuana legalization initiative, the Harris marketing campaign pushed aside it as “pandering.”
Harris’s newest remarks at the podcast had been the primary time she has discussed marijuana coverage since launching her marketing campaign in past due July.
Her place isn’t mentioned on her marketing campaign website online.