On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced her support for legalizing recreational marijuana use on a federal level.
The Democratic nominee for president announced her views on the subject during a guest appearance on the sports podcast “All the Smoke.”
“I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior,” Harris said.
The idea of legalizing marijuana is not “new” for her, she said.
“I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it,” Harris explained.
Harris also discussed how the criminalization of selling and using the drug has disproportionately targeted Black communities. Although Black people use the drug at the same rate as white people, they are arrested for marijuana-related offenses at a rate that is four times higher.
“We know historically what [criminalization of marijuana] has meant and who has gone to jail,” Harris noted.
Although Harris has expressed support for legalizing recreational cannabis use in the past years, she was ambivalent about legalization as recently as 2016.
As a U.S. senator in 2018, Harris, alongside Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), co-sponsored legislation that would have expunged past cannabis-related offenses and legalized the drug for recreational use. She expressed support for similar moves in 2020 as a candidate for president during the Democratic primaries.
In 2016, however, as a candidate for senator, she took no position on marijuana legalization, even as voters in her home state of California were considering passing a ballot initiative to legalize the drug. Harris also campaigned against a similar measure in 2010 as a candidate for attorney general, stating that she supported medicinal use of marijuana but not legalizing recreational use.
As a district attorney in San Francisco, Harris’s office oversaw nearly 2,000 convictions for marijuana use, although in most cases individuals were not sent to prison upon being convicted.
Despite this history, Harris’s current stance on cannabis legalization goes beyond President Joe Biden’s action on the issue — earlier this year, his administration announced a plan to reschedule cannabis from a Schedule I designation (the most strictly regulated drugs, which are considered to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”) to Schedule III, which are less regulated. However, that plan did not call for federal legalization.
Harris is also ahead of Republican candidate for president Donald Trump on legalization. While Trump has expressed that he will be voting for Florida to allow recreational use of the drug, he has not come out in favor of federally legalizing it, and has taken harsh anti-drug positions (including calling for the death penalty for drug dealers) that suggest he won’t be changing his mind on marijuana use at the national level anytime soon.
The vast majority of Americans support legalizing cannabis. A Gallup poll from last November, for example, found that 70 percent of voters backed full legalization of marijuana, while just 29 percent wanted the drug to remain illegal.
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.
And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.
In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $150,000 in one-time donations and to add 1,500 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.
Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.
If you have the means to make a substantial gift, please dig deep during this critical time!
With gratitude and resolve,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy