Harris Voices Support for Legalizing Marijuana

Vice President and Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Las Vegas on Sept. 29, 2024. Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images

For the first time since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated her support for legalizing marijuana at the federal level, going further on the issue than President Joe Biden.

During a nearly hourlong interview on the sports and culture podcast “All the Smoke” that aired on Sept. 30, Harris said she believes “we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing behavior.”

In May, the Biden administration announced that it was directing the Drug Enforcement Administration to consider reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

That move followed Biden’s 2022 recommendation to the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to “initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.”

“I just feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed,” Harris told hosts Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes.

“And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail.”

Although Harris said supporting legalization is “not a new position for me” and that she has “felt for a long time [that] we need to legalize it,” her position on marijuana has changed since her early career.

During a 2019 Democratic presidential debate, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard criticized Harris for aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related offenses as San Francisco’s district attorney and later as attorney general of California.

In 2010, Harris opposed the state’s Proposition 19, a ballot measure that tried and failed to legalize recreational marijuana.

It wasn’t until Proposition 64 in 2016 that Californians over the age of 21 had access to marijuana without a medical diagnosis and state-issued card.

As a U.S. Senator, however, Harris co-sponsored the Marijuana Justice Act of 2019, which aimed to end the federal prohibition of marijuana.

That same year, while running for president, she supported expunging nonviolent marijuana-related crimes, which Biden eventually implemented in 2022.

She also posted a video to the social platform X in April this year, where she said no one should “have to go to jail for smoking weed” and that “we must continue to change our nation’s approach to marijuana.”

While the Biden administration has been the first to move toward reclassifying marijuana—which would be the most significant change in decades of drug policy from the executive branch—he has not gone as far as backing full legalization.

Former President Donald Trump’s positions on marijuana have shifted as well.

While he recently endorsed Florida’s Amendment 3—a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana for adults over 21—his administration rescinded the Obama-era Cole Memorandum, which had directed federal prosecutors not to pursue marijuana criminal offenses in states where it is legal under state law.

Then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in February 2017 that the Justice Department would see a “greater enforcement” of federal laws regarding recreational marijuana.

In 2024, however, Trump has supported the Biden administration’s efforts to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug.

When he endorsed Florida’s marijuana legalization initiative, the Harris campaign dismissed it as “pandering.”

Harris’s latest remarks on the podcast were the first time she has mentioned marijuana policy since launching her campaign in late July.

Her position isn’t stated on her campaign website.

Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, avoided the legalization question in a recent interview with Spectrum News. He said the topic should be left to the states to decide.