Vice President Kamala Harris announced last week her intention, if elected president, to "legalize marijuana at the federal level."
This is not a new position for Harris the politician, but it is a new position for Harris the Democratic nominee for president. In 2019, Harris was one of eight senators to co-sponsor U.S. Sen. Cory Booker's Marijuana Justice Act. That legislation would have removed cannabis from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled Substances Act, effectively legalizing it at the federal level.
Like other attempts to legalize cannabis through Congress in recent years, it failed.
What is notable about Harris' announcement last week is that it is in multiple ways a departure from how prominent Democrats have been approaching cannabis reform.
First of all, it is historic. The Guardian reports that Harris' announcement is the first time a major party presidential nominee has taken "such an unambiguous stance on ending cannabis prohibition."
In the 2020 Democratic primary, numerous candidates, including Harris, signaled their support for federal legalization. Joe Biden, who ultimately became the nominee, was the rare outlier who did not come out in support of federal legalization.
Beyond that, it marks a departure from not only the administration in which she has served as vice president, but from remarks made by her own running mate for vice president.
Tim Walz, as recently as last month, has been public about his support for legalization as an issue to be decided by the states. And in October 2022, the Biden administration announced a set of changes to cannabis policy including one that would reconsider where cannabis falls under the Controlled Substances Act.
President Biden's 2022 policy announcement could have meant decriminalization of cannabis at the federal level, but it stopped well short of legalization. Even that has not yet been realized.
In a rare instance of alignment with Biden, former President Donald Trump announced in September that he supports moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.
Federal cannabis reform has been a slow process, with numerous fits and starts over the years, though momentum has been steadily building in the decade-plus since the start of state-by-state legalization.
Considering the track record on federal-level reform, it may not be wise to get your hopes up yet. But then again, we've never been at a point where one contender for president supports federal legalization and the other supports federal decriminalization. ♦
