Harris said on the podcast released Monday that it’s a position she’s long held, but it marks the first time she has spoken up on the issue publicly since she became the Democratic nominee.
“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,” Harris said during a nearly hourlong interview on the sports and culture podcast.
“I just feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed,” she told hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail.”
Harris had not previously clarified her stance on marijuana since launching her campaign. There is no reference to it on her campaign website, and she avoided answering specific questions about her position as recently as last week.
Harris’s views on marijuana have evolved over the years, much like the public’s.
- As a senator, Harris co-sponsored legislation to end the federal prohibition of marijuana. When she was running for president in 2019, she called for expunging nonviolent marijuana-related criminal offenses, something the Biden administration has now implemented.
- But she has been criticized for aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related crimes when she was San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general. She also spoke out against Proposition 19, the failed 2010 California ballot measure to legalize and regulate marijuana. Harris supported medical marijuana.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration also announced it started on the formal rulemaking process to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I designation to a Schedule III designation.
But President Biden has stopped short of calling for full legalization, making Harris’s support more notable.
