Kamala Harris Would Be First Major Presidential Nominee to Back Marijuana Legalization

With respect to the pardons, as advocates have been quick to point out, there are also still an estimated 2,800 people currently in federal prison for marijuana convictions that aren’t limited to simple possession. Multiple groups, including immigrants and those who’ve been charged with selling marijuana, were excluded from the presidential pardon.

Symbolically, however, the announcement represented a paradigm shift in federal cannabis policy. Recognizing that the majority of cannabis convictions happen at the state level, the administration also took the opportunity to urge governors in state across the US to follow Biden’s lead by using their own authority to grant similar relief.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the president also signed into law the first piece of standalone marijuana reform legislation, designed to streamline cannabis research.

However, the administration has faced criticism over anti-cannabis policy actions—including multiple budget requests that proposed maintaining a ban that has long prevented Washington, DC, from using its local tax dollars to implement a system of marijuana sales.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, has repeatedly defended in federal courts the ongoing ban on gun ownership by people who use cannabis, arguing that consumers pose a unique threat and comparing them to people with mental illnesses.

Under the administration, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has faced scrutiny for using resources to seize cannabis from state-legal businesses in New Mexico.

The White House has also come out against a House-passed proposal to prevent military branches from testing for marijuana for enlistment or commission as part of a large-scale defense bill, calling cannabis use a “military readiness and safety concern.”

However, the president signed an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains provisions to fund clinical trials into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for active-duty military service members.

Early in 2021, meanwhile, the administration came under fire after it was reported that it had terminated or otherwise punished dozens of staffers who disclosed prior marijuana use as part of their background check process.

Legislation and Policy Actions: Senate

As a senator, Harris’s most notable contribution was her sponsorship of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which would federally legalize cannabis and promote social equity.

“Times have changed—marijuana should not be a crime,” she said when introducing the 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.”

The senator first came out in support of legalization in 2018, adding her name to a different far-reaching bill introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). The legislation, the Marijuana Justice Act, would remove cannabis from the list of federally banned substances and also penalize states where marijuana laws are enforced disproportionately against people of color. She also cosponsored the 2019 version of the bill.

“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.”

“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 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.”

Beyond the MORE Act and Marijuana Justice Act, Harris co-sponsored the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which would protect banks that work with marijuana businesses from federal punishment.

The senator also sponsored bills aimed at repairing land in California that’s been impacted by illicit cannabis grows and another piece of legislation that would protect people with drug convictions from losing public housing.

Harris additionally signed a letter alongside then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), calling on the Justice Department to stop blocking federal research into medical cannabis. In a separate sign-on letter, she joined colleagues in requesting that lawmakers include protections for legal-cannabis states in a spending bill.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2019, Harris discussed how a Black man incarcerated over marijuana died after contracting coronavirus. She stated that the case illustrated how “we have two systems of justice in America,” based on race.

She and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) made a similar point in a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr.

Harris and two other senators wrote a letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in 2020, criticizing Republicans in the chamber for putting forth a policing reform bill that they argued was inadequate, in part because it would not ban no-knock raids in drug cases.

The senator and 43 other members of Congress urged the Justice Department to investigate the death of 26-year-old Black woman Breonna Taylor in a botched drug raid.

In September 2020, Harris cited racial disparities in marijuana enforcement as an example of how there are effectively two separate systems of justice in the country for people of color and white people.

Harris tweeted that the Senate “must pass my Marijuana Opportunity Act to legalize marijuana at the federal level and expunge non-violent marijuana-related offenses.”

That year she also signed onto a letter to Senate leadership, imploring them to include language in coronavirus relief legislation that would allow marijuana businesses to access federal relief dollars like companies in other industries.

“Marijuana small businesses employ more than 240,000 workers and should be allowed to access coronavirus relief funds too,” she tweeted. “My colleagues and I are pushing to ensure they’re not left out of Congress’s next relief package.”

Harris and 10 other senators also sent a letter to leadership in a key committee asking that they add a provision allowing cannabis businesses to access federal loan services in spending legislation.

When the governor of Illinois issued pardons for more than 11,000 people with cannabis convictions the day before legal sales started there, the senator said she applauded the decision.

“Expunging non-violent marijuana-related offenses is the right thing to do,” she said. “Now let’s legalize marijuana at the federal level.”

Harris joined a group of senators in 2019 in pressing top federal drug and health agencies to provide an update on the status of efforts to increase the number of authorized marijuana manufacturers for research purposes.

She and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers sent a letter to the Justice Department, requesting a policy change allowing researchers to access marijuana from state-legal dispensaries to improve studies on the plant’s benefits and risks.

On the unofficial marijuana holiday 4/20 in 2020, Harris tweeted that the Senate “must pass my Marijuana Opportunity Act to legalize marijuana at the federal level and expunge non-violent marijuana-related offenses from the records of the millions who’ve been arrested or incarcerated. Too many lives have been ruined by these regressive policies.”

Using loaded war-on-drugs rhetoric, however, she called President Donald Trump a “drug pusher” for promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID-19.

California Attorney General and District Prosecutor

During an attempt to legalize marijuana in California, through a 2010 initiative that appeared on the same ballot as Harris’s candidacy for state attorney general, she called the measure a “flawed public policy.” Her campaign manager said she “supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that,” and that she “believes that drug selling harms communities.”

Harris also co-authored an argument against the measure that appeared in the state’s official ballot guide, stating that legalization “seriously compromises the safety of our communities, roadways, and workplaces.”

She spoke about prosecuting people for selling drugs, saying, “I don’t feel sorry for you and I’m not going to forgive you for committing a crime.”

During a speech at the Commonwealth Club in 2010, Harris scoffed at a question about cannabis reform and said “I’m not a proponent of that, but I know that there are a lot of people who are. It’s not my issue.” At the same event she spoke about prosecuting people for selling drugs, saying, “I don’t feel sorry for you and I’m not going to forgive you for committing a crime.”

Later, during her stint as attorney general, Harris received criticism from some marijuana policy reform advocates for not doing more to push back against federal prosecutors’ crackdown against locally approved California medical cannabis dispensaries during the first term of the Obama administration, though she did send a series of letters on the topic and made some public statements.

“The federal government is ill-equipped to be the sole arbiter of whether an individual or group is acting within the bounds of California’s medical marijuana laws when cultivating marijuana for medical purposes,” she wrote in a letter to the state’s US attorneys.

She also called on state lawmakers to clarify California’s medical cannabis laws in a separate letter, which argued that reforms might ward off further federal intervention. “Without a substantive change to existing law, these irreconcilable interpretations of the law, and the resulting uncertainty for law enforcement and seriously ill patients, will persist,” she wrote.

“Californians overwhelmingly support the compassionate use of medical marijuana for the ill. We should all be troubled, however, by the proliferation of gangs and criminal enterprises that seek to exploit this law by illegally cultivating and trafficking marijuana,” she said in a statement around the same time.

“While there are definite ambiguities in state law that must be resolved either by the state legislature or the courts, an overly broad federal enforcement campaign will make it more difficult for legitimate patients to access physician-recommended medicine in California,” she said. “I urge the federal authorities in the state to adhere to the United States Department of Justice’s stated policy and focus their enforcement efforts on ‘significant traffickers of illegal drugs.’”

“Drug crimes in particular exact a terrible toll and rob people young and old of hope.”

An analysis by the Washington Free Beacon determined that at least 1,560 people were sent to California state prisons for marijuana-related convictions during Harris’s tenure as attorney general.

In a 2008 book, Harris argued that nonviolent crimes “exact a huge toll on America’s communities” and that it’s “important to fight all crime.”

“Drug crimes in particular exact a terrible toll and rob people young and old of hope,” she wrote.

The vice president made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in June 2024, where she dismissed the “gateway drug” theory and promoted the administration’s cannabis clemency efforts but also seemed to overstate how the administration’s move to reschedule cannabis would impact criminal justice and the resulting availability of resources for other priorities.

“I think we both agree that people shouldn’t have to go to jail for smoking weed,” the vice president said. “And we’ve pardoned a number of people.”

“You know, I think it’s interesting also because, remember, there was a time when people would say, ‘well, marijuana is a gateway drug,’ and these were failed policies,” she said. “The resources should be better directed—and will be better directed—to deal with opioid addiction and what we need to do around fentanyl, getting more resources into mental health and mental health care.”

“Many of you have heard me say, I just don’t think people should have to go to jail for smoking weed. And these pardons have been issued as an extension of that approach.”

Moving marijuana to Schedule III would not legalize cannabis, so it’s unclear how that reclassification would directly lead to the reallocation of resources as the vice president suggested.

At a roundtable event alongside Kim Kardashian and four people who received presidential pardons for drug-related convictions in April 2024, Harris said the administration remains committed to exercising its clemency authority, which has included Biden’s pardon proclamations for cannabis possession.

“Many of you have heard me say, I just don’t think people should have to go to jail for smoking weed. And these pardons have been issued as an extension of that approach,” she said.

On the cannabis holiday 4/20 in 2024, both Biden and Harris promoted marijuana policy reform in social media posts at exactly 4:20 pm ET.

While commemorating “Second Chance Month” that same month, Harris also shared a video clip on social media from her White House roundtable with marijuana pardon recipients.

In February 2024, Harris said the administration’s move to pardon people for federal marijuana possession conviction is an example of how it is delivering particularly for young and Black people.

“Another issue [is] what we have done to pardon tens of thousands of people for simple marijuana possession under the federal law—because, frankly, nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed,” the vice president said.

“So these are some of the things that we have done that I think really do resonate with young people, with Black voters and young Black voters, with young Black men,” she said, also citing efforts to increase access to high-speed internet and fund historically Black colleges and universities. “And there’s more to do.”

While Harris said “tens of thousands” have been pardoned under President Joe Biden’s October 2022 and December 2023 clemency proclamations, the Justice Department estimates that roughly 13,000 people have been granted relief under the executive action.

Also in February 2024, the vice president cited the administration’s moves toward reforming federal marijuana laws in a video appealing to young voters—though her specific claim that policies had already been “changed” was widely viewed as premature.

“We changed federal marijuana policy, because nobody should have to go to jail just for smoking weed,” Harris said in the video.

On the 2020 Presidential Campaign Trail

During her prior 2020 presidential run, Harris released a criminal justice plan that said “it is past time to end the failed war on drugs, and it begins with legalizing marijuana.”

“It’s time to end mass incarceration,” she tweeted the same day. “This includes legalizing marijuana, sentencing reforms, and abolishing private prisons. With the addition of job training and education, these actions will reduce crime and help build healthy communities.”

After then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced a markup of the MORE Act in November 2019, Harris wrote that the “War on Drugs was an abject failure,” and that it’s “time to legalize marijuana and bring justice to people of color harmed by failed drug policies.”

“Not only do we need to legalize marijuana at the federal level, but we have to do it right and bring justice to communities of color.”

“Grateful for [Nadler’s] partnership on this issue,” she said. “I look forward to getting our bill one step closer to becoming law.”

After the committee approved the legislation, Harris wrote, “Not only do we need to legalize marijuana at the federal level, but we have to do it right and bring justice to communities of color,” and said the MORE Act would accomplish that.

“Last week, my bill to legalize marijuana passed through House committee with bipartisan support,” she said. “I’ll say it again: We can’t legalize marijuana without addressing the injustices to people of color caused by the War on Drugs. My bill would do just that.”

Then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), another former presidential candidate, criticized Harris’s prosecutorial record during a Democratic debate in August 2019. In a follow-up interview, the senator evaded a question about the exchange, dismissing the critique by stating that “I’m obviously a top tier candidate and so I did expect that I would be on the stage and take hits tonight because there are a lot of people that are trying to make the stage for the next debate.”

The Bay Area News Group analyzed the marijuana prosecution record of Harris and said the findings demonstrate that her history “is more nuanced than those debate-stage confrontations indicate.”

Days after Biden said he doesn’t support adult-use legalization because marijuana could be a gateway to more dangerous drugs, Harris tweeted “marijuana isn’t a gateway drug and should be legalized.”

The candidate said that cannabis legalization is an example of an issue she’s changed her mind on over time during an interview with NowThis.

“The whole war on drugs was a complete failure,” she said during an appearance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “That approach is the gateway to America’s problem with mass incarceration.” She didn’t directly answer a question about what made her change her mind about cannabis reform from prior opposition to legalization, however.

“The criminalization of marijuana has been such a big part of what has fueled America’s system of mass incarceration,” she said.

“There are thousands of people labeled felons for life for selling marijuana, while people out there are making a fortune from the marijuana industry,” the senator said. “This is an injustice, and as president, I’ll fix it.”

Prior to a House vote on legislation to protect banks that service cannabis businesses, Harris joined then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and fellow presidential contenders Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in expressing concern about approving cannabis bills that would largely benefit the industry without first passing comprehensive legalization legislation.

“We shouldn’t do this without addressing the reality that people of color are being shut out of the legal marijuana industry,” she said of the banking bill. “That means not only legalizing marijuana but also expunging criminal records and providing a path for people of color to enter the industry.”

“We must ensure that as marijuana becomes a bigger business, we are committing ourselves to rebuilding communities that have been disproportionately targeted by failed drug policies and creating a diverse industry going forward,” she wrote in an op-ed for CNN. “If we fail to address a system that has historically been infected by racial bias, communities of color will continue to shoulder the devastating impacts of the past.”

“Times have changed. We must get smart on marijuana reform and give everyone the opportunity to reap the benefits that come from the legal marijuana industry,” she said.

After Illinois’ governor signed a marijuana legalization bill in June 2019, Harris said she’s thankful that “states like Illinois are stepping up to correct the mistakes of our past” and that it’s “time to do the same at the federal level.”

“As the marijuana industry continues to grow, there are people of color sitting behind bars for doing the exact same thing. It’s time we changed the system,” Harris said at a conference in April 2019, adding that those most impacted by the drug war should be prioritized when it comes to job opportunities in the legal industry.

She also pledged to pardon some people with nonviolent drug convictions if elected president.

“We have to have the courage to recognize that there are a lot of folks who have been incarcerated who should not have been incarcerated and are still in prison because they were convicted under draconian laws that have incarcerated them … for what is essentially a public health issue,” she said.

In November 2019, Harris discussed the need for industry equity and joked about businesses claiming that rubbing CBD lotion all over one’s body is a cure-all.

The senator said that drug addiction should be treated as a health issue and “not in jails and prisons,” adding that people with prior cannabis convictions should be “first in line” to get jobs in the legal market.

“Countless Americans have felt the devastating ramifications of the War on Drugs—millions still remain incarcerated to this day.”

Harris also said she would implement “mental health care on demand and drug treatment on demand.”

“Countless Americans have felt the devastating ramifications of the War on Drugs—millions still remain incarcerated to this day,” Harris said in March. “This is a matter of public health, drug addiction, and economic security. I’ll say it again as I did in 2008: it was a complete failure.”

“Our justice system continues to target and imprison young Black and Latinx Americans at high levels due to outdated, unjust marijuana laws,” she wrote. “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: we must legalize marijuana across the country.”

She also discussed her views on marijuana and drug policy during a campaign stop in New Hampshire in July 2019.

“We have to treat it as a public health issue, specifically on the issue of marijuana,” Harris said. “We incarcerated whole entire populations, in particular young men of color, for possessing marijuana, and they ended up being felons for life on an issue that was literally—if you look at it just in terms of the disparities in terms of who was arrested, who was incarcerated and who was abusing—it was just wrong.”

As Biden’s Running Mate

Harris stressed in August 2019 that there would be a “policy that is going to be about decriminalizing marijuana” in a Biden administration.

She also said the following month that the administration won’t be “half-steppin’” with “incrementalism” as far as criminal justice reform is concerned. But Harris stopped short of pledging marijuana legalization, saying they would only decriminalize cannabis and expunge prior records.

The then-senator made a habit of raising the decriminalization and expungements pledge after joining the ticket with Biden.

In September 2020, she again made the pledge to enact that reform if the pair were elected. That, of course, has not come to fruition.

At a vice presidential debate with then-vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, she made the same promise—though she seemed uneasy when she was attacked over her own drug enforcement record as a prosecutor.

Harris said in October 2020 that the administration would have “a commitment to decriminalizing marijuana and expunging the records of people who have been convicted of marijuana offenses.”

She similarly said that she has a “deal” with Biden to candidly share feedback on policy issues where they disagree, including on cannabis legalization.

At campaign events in Texas and Nevada, Harris reaffirmed that decriminalization would be a priority if the Democratic ticket was elected. She made the same comments in another interview, adding that the pair would be “making sure no one is put behind bars just because they’ve used drugs.”