Vice President Kamala Harris this week called for federal marijuana legalization and vowed that, if elected President, she will work to make recreational marijuana legalization “the law of the land.”
Harris unveiled the legalization push as part of a suite of economic policies called the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men.”
The agenda states that elected President Harris will “break down unjust legal barriers that hold Black men and other Americans back by legalizing marijuana nationally, working with Congress to ensure that the safe cultivation, distribution, and possession of recreational marijuana is the law of the land.”
It also states that Harris will “fight to ensure that as the national cannabis industry takes shape, Black men - who have, for years, been overpoliced for marijuana use - are able to access wealth and jobs in this new market.”
Among other measures, the agenda includes the provision of $1 million, fully-forgivable loans to Black entrepreneurs, support for education, training and mentorship programs for Black men to “get good paying jobs in high demand industries,” support for a regulatory framework cryptocurrency, and a national health equity initiative to address health challenges that disproportionately affect black men.
In a tweet on Tuesday, October 18th, Harris wrote “No one should go to jail for smoking weed,” above an image that said “breaking down unjust barriers that hold black men and other Americans back and making sure Black Americans have opportunities to succeed as the marketplace takes shape.”
In contrast, “Trump’s Department of Justice threatened federal prosecutions for marijuana in states where marijuana use is legal, continuing the unjust and disproportional use of marijuana possession laws to put Black Americans behind bars,” the Harris campaign wrote.
The announcement by the Harris campaign coincide s with the release of a new poll that shows that 78% of black voters support Harris, a significant drop from the 90% of black voters who chose Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
“Ms. Harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of Black voters, but Mr. Trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a longstanding Democratic advantage. His campaign has relied on targeted advertising and sporadic outreach events to court African American voters — especially Black men — and has seen an uptick in support. About 15 percent of Black likely voters said they planned to vote for the former president, according to the new poll, a six-point increase from four years ago,” the New York Times wrote.
In an interview earlier in October, Harris told the hosts of the “All the Smoke” podcast that “I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior.”
She added “Actually this is not a new position for me, I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it. So that’s where I am at.”
In May 2023, Minnesota Governor and Kamala Harris running mate Tim Walz signed a bill legalizing adult-use cannabis in Minnesota.
“We’ve known for too long that prohibiting the use of cannabis hasn’t worked. By legalizing adult-use cannabis, we’re expanding our economy, creating jobs, and regulating the industry to keep Minnesotans safe,” Walz said upon signing the bill.
During an interview in September, Walz said he thinks legalization is “an issue for the states.”
He also said that “there’s work to be done nationally around the banking issue,” when it comes to cannabis, and that if Democrats controlled both houses of Congress then “we can start to see if some of those things make sense.”
He did not issue a call for federal cannabis legalization.
Also in September, former president Donald Trump said that he plans to vote yes on a Florida ballot measure to legalize marijuana and that “as President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common-sense laws, including safe banking for state-authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens.”
In May, President Joe Biden published a tweet in which he issued his support for the reclassification of cannabis as a Schedule III substance. “No one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana. Today’s announcement builds on the work we’ve already done to pardon a record number of federal offenses for simple possession of marijuana,” Biden wrote in a subsequent tweet.
Reclassification would have many major impacts on the industry and would serve as confirmation that the federal government believes that cannabis has confirmed medical value.
Reclassification won’t change the criminal laws around cannabis but most significantly for the cannabis industry, it would mean the end of tax code 280E which bans cannabis companies from deducting business expenses, a major obstacle for the industry.