Harris pledges to federally legalize marijuana to bolster Black communities. Will it work?
On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris became the first major presidential candidate to endorse the federal legalization of cannabis , pledging to ensure "the safe cultivation, distribution and possession of recreational marijuana is the law of the land." Though many states have legalized cannabis and its marijuana extracts, the drug still remains illegal at the federal level.
The declaration was made in an "Opportunity Agenda" designed to support Black men that also includes plans to improve access to addiction treatment and other medications. It also states Harris would provide forgivable loans for Black business owners along with opportunities for the Black community to participate as a "national cannabis industry takes shape."
The agenda, released at a Black-owned business in Erie, Pennsylvania, appears to be part of a larger strategy to appeal to Black voters that also included a campaign stop in Detroit. There, Harris was interviewed by radio host Charlamagne tha God, whose morning hip-hop show, "The Breakfast Club," has a weekly audience of 4.5 million listeners.
"I will work on decriminalizing [cannabis] because I know exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations and specifically Black men," Harris said during the interview Tuesday.
The campaign push comes after a New York Times/Siena College poll found that, although Harris had increased support among Black voters after President Biden dropped out of the race, she still trailed behind the proportion of Black voters that Biden had to win the election in 2020 by about 10 percentage points. Meanwhile, the number of Black voters pledging support for Trump has increased to 15 percentage points from nine in the 2020 election. As Harris said in the Tuesday interview, it is expected to be a "margin-of-error race."
When Charlamagne tha God asked Harris to comment on the "political timing" of the agenda and the sentiment that "some people in the Democrat Party use Black Americans to play identity politics," Harris said the initiative built on the economic agenda she has been working on for years as senator and vice president and specifically highlighted her efforts to increase money in community banks.
"When our Black men are taken care of, that is better for our community, that is better for our family, and that is better for our economy."
"Of all the venture capital funding, only 1% goes to Black entrepreneurs," Harris said. "We don't have the same rates of access to capital, be it through family or through connections, which is why I've done the work of putting billions more dollars into community banks, which go directly to the community."
The agenda Harris released this week takes a holistic approach to Black men's health care, not only vowing to increase screenings for conditions like prostate cancer and funding for diseases like sickle cell disease that disproportionately impact Black men, but also promising $20,000 in forgivable loans for socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs among many other economic pledges.
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Many Black and brown communities disproportionately criminalized for marijuana possession are still dealing with the trauma that this caused, and a legalization plan that centralizes the health of these communities is necessary, Frederika Easley, president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, told Salon.
"When our Black men are taken care of, that is better for our community, that is better for our family, and that is better for our economy," Easley said in a phone interview. "We know that stress is a silent killer, and specifically for Black men, there is a weight on their shoulders."
Racial disparities persist even in states that have legalized cannabis , with reduced rates of incarceration mostly among white people, said Dr. Yasmin Hurd, the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai.
"Despite the legalization in many states, arrests for Black and brown people are still relatively the same as before legalization," Hurd told Salon in an email.
President Joe Biden pardoned thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession charges during his presidency and moved toward rescheduling marijuana as a less dangerous drug but stopped short of supporting legislation to nationally legalize it. Donald Trump has recently voiced support for Biden's loosening of marijuana restrictions and said he would vote for legalization in Florida , which is on this November's ballot. During his presidency, Trump appointed Jeff Sessions to the role of attorney general, a stark opponent to progressive drug policy including cannabis reform. He also signed the First Step Act , which lowered sentences for certain drug-related crimes.
Harris' stance on cannabis has changed over time. As a district attorney in San Francisco in 2010, Harris did not support a proposed ballot initiative to legalize cannabis and urged voters to decide against Prop 19. In her role there, she did support the use of marijuana medically, but also prosecuted more than 1,900 people on cannabis-related cases. In 2019, Harris sponsored a law put forth to decriminalize marijuana as a junior U.S. Senator.
During a roundtable discussion with rapper Fat Joe about inequities in federal marijuana policy in March, Harris acknowledged racial disparities in drug charges and said it was "absurd" and "patently unfair" that the federal government considers marijuana to be as dangerous as heroin and other Schedule 1 drugs.
The Harris campaign did not respond to Salon's request for comment before this story's publication.
Harris' evolution on cannabis legalization has reflected changes in public opinion, said Morgan Fox, the political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML.) In 2010, for example, a minority of the U.S. public favored recreational marijuana legalization. Today, two-thirds of voters support it .
"We're seeing national support, across political lines, in the majority for ending federal prohibition," Fox told Salon in a phone interview. "I think that smart politicians on both sides of the aisle are going to be looking at the poll numbers and the increasing outpouring of support for ending these disastrous prohibition policies and will eventually begin to start prioritizing this."
How Harris could get federal legalization passed by Congress if she does win the election is unclear, Steven Bender, a law professor at Seattle University School of Law, told Salon. Nevertheless, this action plan from Harris addresses not only the over-policing of Black communities in relation to cannabis, but the economic consequences to stem from it — and that is significant, Bender said.
"It is symbolic and important that it's something that no serious presidential candidate with a major party who got the nomination has been saying before," Bender said in a phone interview.
