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Vice President Kamala Harris has doubled down on her claims that no one should be jailed for smoking cannabis, despite overseeing 2,000 convictions as a San Francisco prosecutor.
Speaking on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Myers, in what was her in her first late-night television interview since taking office, she was asked what would happen after President Joe Biden’s announcement last week that he would pardon thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession.
Harris said the White House would continue to urge governors to take action and suggested Congress should act to create a “uniform approach” to the drug.
“We’ve tried over the years, but let’s start with this: I’m convinced, and the majority of Americans agree, that no one should go to jail for smoking weed, right.” ?’ said Harris to cheers and applause from the assembled audience.
Vice President Kamala Harris once opposed promoted marijuana legalization during an interview with Seth Meyers on his NBC TV show Monday night.
Harris appeared on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Myers, in what she was during her first nightly television interview since taking office in January 2021.
“Nobody should go to jail for smoking weed,” the vice president reiterated
Harris said the White House would continue to urge governors to take action and suggested Congress should act to create a “uniform approach” to the drug.
LVice President Kamala Harris, Backstage with Seth Meyers on Monday Night
“And so we’re starting with that, and the president has been very clear — we’re urging governors and states to take our lead and pardon people who have been made criminals for marijuana possession.”
“Ultimately, as with so many things, there is a unified approach when Congress acts. Ask who you vote for where they stand on this and vote accordingly.”
Harris’ line on the subject was virtually identical to this weekend’s at an event in Austin, Texas on Saturday.
“We’re also changing, you may have heard that this week, the federal government’s approach to marijuana. Because the bottom line is, no one should go to jail for smoking weed,” the vice president said.
While Harris appears to be behind decriminalizing the drug now, it’s a complete reversal of the position she took when she was California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2016.
During her time in the role, nearly 2,000 people went to jail for marijuana-related crimes, but many of those cases were prosecuted by independently elected district attorneys.
As state attorney general, she also refused to join other states’ efforts to remove marijuana from the DEA’s list of dangerous controlled substances.
While working as a prosecutor in San Francisco, she oversaw 2,000 convictions, with 45 people serving prison terms.
Harris led a roundtable on reproductive rights Saturday at the LBJ library at the University of Texas at Austin, where she repeated the same “nobody should be in jail.”
None of the marijuana convictions that got Harris’ office are still on the books — her successor DA George Gascon erased all 9,300 of San Francisco’s 1975 marijuana convictions.
Harris actively fought a ballot measure for legalized pot in 2010, and was silent when a second ballot was passed in 2016.
In 2014, when she was re-elected, she was asked about her Republican opponent Rick Gold’s support for the legalization of marijuana. She laughed and said Gold was “entitled to his opinion.”
While running for president in 2019, Harris joked in a radio interview that she naturally smoked weed.
“Half of my family is from Jamaica,” Harris said at the time. ‘Are you joking?’
The joke did not go down well with the father of the now vice president, Donald Harris.
My dear late grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my late parents, must now turn in their graves to see their family name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity intertwined. are, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a weed-smoking fortune hunter and in pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote in an unsolicited statement to Kingston-based Jamaica Global Online.
Last week, President Biden pardoned more than 6,500 ‘simple’ federal marijuana convictions
“Speaking on behalf of myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically distance ourselves from this travesty,” he added.
Asked by radio host Charlamagne Tha God of ‘The Breakfast Club’ if she smoked weed in 2020.
‘I have. And I inhaled,” Harris said. ‘It was long ago.’
In addition to dropping convictions for marijuana last week, Biden is having the Department of Health and Human Services and Attorney General Merrick Garland “urgently review” how marijuana is planned under federal law.
Marijuana remains a Schedule I drug — alongside heroin and ecstasy, and above fentanyl and cocaine — despite being legal for medicinal and recreational use in many states.
The DOJ will be tasked with providing individuals with a certificate recognizing their pardon.
Officials also said no one is currently in prison on charges of marijuana possession alone.
“Simple” marijuana possession is considered a Class A misdemeanor with a $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison for a first-time offender.
White House officials also made it clear that no one could be prosecuted for this crime at the federal level after Thursday’s presidential announcement.