Kamala Harris signals she’ll go further than Biden on marijuana legalization
Vice President Kamala Harris has long held more progressive views on marijuana legalization than President Joe Biden.
For the first time since launching her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris affirmed her support for legalizing marijuana at the federal level.
“We have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior,” Harris said on an episode of the “All the Smoke” podcast released on Monday.
It’s a stance that puts her ahead of where President Joe Biden has been on the issue. While the Biden administration this year initiated a process to reclassify marijuana as a less harmful drug and has issued thousands of pardons for marijuana-related offenses, Biden has not called for fully legalizing the drug.
Harris has long supported legalizing marijuana, including introducing legislation as a senator to legalize the drug nationwide and expunge nonviolent marijuana-related offenses.
Marijuana legalization would have significant economic implications. According to the Marijuana Policy Project, states collected more than $4 billion in tax revenue from the industry in 2023.
“This is not a new position for me,” Harris said on the podcast. “I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it, so that’s where I am on that.”
Vice President Harris: I feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed. We need to legalize it pic.twitter.com/vDCdWOdlRD
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 30, 2024
But before this week, it was unclear whether Harris continued to hold that position as her party’s new standard-bearer. She had not publicly commented on marijuana legalization since launching her campaign, her issues page didn’t mention marijuana, and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, dodged a question about it this month.
Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, a key sponsor of “safe banking” legislation to enable banks to work with marijuana businesses, told B-17 last week that he didn’t “know where she is on this issue.”
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has expressed some support for marijuana legalization, declaring that he would vote for a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana use in Florida while signaling support for safe-banking laws.
Legalizing marijuana is popular with the American public. In a 2023 Gallup poll, 70% of Americans — including a bare majority of Republicans — said they thought the drug should be legal.
