Presidential nominee Joe Biden announced this week that he has chosen Californian Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate. Many are now wondering where the senator stands when it comes to marijuana legislation.
As a former attorney general of California, Harris had made marijuana reform a major component of her criminal justice platform when running herself for the 2020 election.
Harris is the chief Senate sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. This legislation includes various social equity and restorative justice provisions.
“Times have changed—marijuana should not be a crime,” she said when she introduced the MORE Act bill. “We need to start regulating marijuana, and expunge marijuana convictions from the records of millions of Americans so they can get on with their lives.
It was in 2018 when Harris made her first move by signing onto Sen. Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act. She had tweeted at the time, “The fact is, marijuana laws are not applied and enforced in the same way for all people. That’s why I’ve signed onto @CoryBooker’s Marijuana Justice Act to make marijuana legal at the federal level. It’s the smart thing to do.”
“Right now in this country people are being arrested, being prosecuted, and end up spending time in jail or prison all because of their use of a drug that otherwise should be considered legal,” she also said in a press release. “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.”
Harris has also signed a letter alongside Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that called on the Justice Department to stop blocking federal research into medical cannabis.
In January Harris tweeted, “I applaud Illinois’ leadership on this issue. Expunging non-violent marijuana-related offenses is the right thing to do. Now let’s legalize marijuana at the federal level.”
This tweet came after the Illinois Governor issued pardons for more than 11,000 people with cannabis convictions the day before legal sales started. The senator said she applauded the decision.
This past April she tweeted, “Marijuana small businesses employ more than 240,000 workers and should be allowed to access coronavirus relief funds too. My colleagues and I are pushing to ensure they’re not left out of Congress’s next relief package.”
