Fact check: Where does Kamala Harris stand on marijuana?
Claim: “We will decriminalize marijuana and we will expunge the records of those who have been convicted of marijuana,” Sen. Kamala Harris said during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence.
Rating: True, though Harris’ view has changed in recent years.
Details:Harris has pushed for legalizing marijuana in the past few years. But as a San Francisco prosecutor and California attorney general, she often had a different view.
She opposed the state’s 2010 initiative to legalize the drug in certain instances. The initiative failed.
She did not back in 2016 Proposition 64, which created a legal market in the state. Harris, then the attorney general, did not take positions on ballot measures, explaining her office was involved in preparing summaries for voters.
At the time, Harris told The Bee that though she generally backed legalization, “There is a whole concern about how we would detect to determine impairment for the purposes of legal or illegal driving. Those are real details and I take seriously when weighing in on a subject such as (this) that we have thought through the details.”
The effort had some high-level supporters, notably the California Medical Association and then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said “It’s a war on the poor and it’s a war on folks of color, and it’s got to end. And the only way you end it is by going to the most destructive and the most ineffective component of that war, and that is the war on cannabis.”
Harris was more unequivocal as a U.S. senator.
In 2018, she co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, to end the federal ban on marijuana.
“Making marijuana legal at the federal level is the smart thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. I know this as a former prosecutor and I know it as a senator,” she said.
In 2019, she proposed a sweeping criminal justice reform plan. “It is past time to end the failed war on drugs, and it begins with legalizing marijuana,” she says, adding the italicized emphasis.
Legalization would particularly help people of color, she said. “Despite roughly equal usage rates, Black people are about four times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 10:29 PM with the headline "Fact check: Where does Kamala Harris stand on marijuana?."
.jpg)