Vice President Harris reaffirmed her help for legalizing marijuana Monday, talking up on the problem publicly for the primary time she turned the Democratic nominee.
“I simply suppose now we have come to a degree the place now we have to grasp that we have to legalize it and cease criminalizing this habits,” Harris stated throughout a virtually hourlong interview on the sports activities and tradition podcast “All of the Smoke” launched Monday.
“I simply really feel strongly folks shouldn’t be going to jail for smoking weed,” she informed hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “And we all know traditionally what that has meant and who has gone to jail.”
The vp added that supporting marijuana legalization is “not a brand new place for me. I’ve felt for a very long time we have to legalize it.”
Harris’s views on marijuana have developed through the years.
She has been criticized for aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related crimes when she was San Francisco’s district legal professional and California’s legal professional common. She additionally spoke out in opposition to Proposition 19, the failed 2010 California poll measure to legalize and regulate marijuana.
As a senator, Harris co-sponsored laws to finish the federal prohibition of marijuana. When she was working for president in 2019, she known as for expunging nonviolent marijuana-related legal offenses, one thing the Biden administration has now applied.
On April 20 this yr, Harris posted on the social platform X that no person “ought to should go to jail for smoking weed” and stated that “we should proceed to vary our nation’s strategy to marijuana.”
Earlier this yr, the Biden administration additionally introduced it began on the formal rulemaking course of to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I designation to a Schedule III designation. However President Biden has stopped in need of calling for full legalization.
When former President Trump just lately stated he supported an initiative to legalize leisure use of marijuana in Florida, Harris’s marketing campaign spokesman dismissed it as “blatant pandering.”
However Harris had not beforehand talked about marijuana since launching her marketing campaign. There isn’t a reference to it on her marketing campaign web site, and he or she prevented answering particular questions on her place as recently as last week.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz additionally just lately dodged the query of legalization, telling Spectrum News he thinks it is a difficulty that ought to be left to particular person states.
