As attorney general of California, Kamala Harris was a staunch opposer of the legalization of marijuana. But amid her run for the White House, the Democrat senator has apparently changed her tune.
Harris was caught on tape this week arguing that convicted felons arrested for dealing drugs were simply “ahead of the curve” and “should be the first in line to get the jobs” in the burgeoning legal marijuana sales industry.
Pot pioneers
Harris was speaking at the “She the People” presidential forum in Houston when she was asked about the “gentrification” of the legal marijuana industry.
“Invariably a lot of the people who historically who were arrested for marijuana sales were young men, young men of color. And so isn’t that the irony of it all?” she said.
She went on: “That now this is one of the fastest growing money-making industries in our country and the very young men who were trying to make money doing the same thing, but got criminalized and have now been branded felons for life are excluded from the economic opportunities that are now available because of this new industry.”
No nonsense prosecutor
Harris has worked hard to frame herself as a pro-weed candidate since she announced her campaign earlier this year. In practice, however, she spent her years as a district attorney of San Francisco and as California’s attorney general criminalizing pot and opposing its legalization.
Harris even lobbied against a statewide effort to legalize recreational marijuana use in 2010.
“Spending two decades in courtrooms, Harris believes that drug selling harms communities,” her campaign director told reporters at the time. “Harris supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that.”
But that’s not exactly true, either. While serving as attorney general, Harris opened the door in California for federal agencies to crack down on medicinal marijuana dispensaries that were legal in her state. Additionally, she opposed efforts to remove marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of most dangerous substances.
The presidential hopeful’s tough stance on pot applied to criminal offenders, as well. As San Francisco’s senior prosecutor, Harris ensured that drug dealer conviction increased from 56% to 74% in just a three-year span. She also closed loopholes on bail and ended drug rehabilitation programs, taking a tough on crime approach to drug enforcement.
Incentivizing crime
Nevertheless, today Harris wants to reward those she punished just a few years ago.
“There have to be policies in place and look at the background and actually do the work of saying some of those young men should be first in line to get the jobs that are available. And that their felony convictions should not be the barrier to them having employment in an industry they were a part of before it was an industry,” Harris said. “They were ahead of the curve.”
Simple marijuana possession is usually treated as a minor misdemeanor. Only when a drug dealer is apprehended with large amounts of marijuana, is caught selling pot near a school, or has been arrested multiple times are they subject to a felony in most states. Ten states have prohibited felony prosecution for marijuana possession altogether.
According to Harris, the low-level drug offenders she once prosecuted so mercilessly were actually the pioneers of pot production, and were merely embracing their entrepreneurial spirit when they were arrested. Harris must be forgetting about the violent crime that accompanies illicit drug trafficking and the murderous street gangs who have profited from the drug trade.
Ultimately, Harris would rather placate the progressive left than remain true to her roots as a strict prosecutor. Fortunately, such dishonesty is vapidly transparent to anyone who knows anything about the would-be-president’s past.
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