Two Pot Legalizers Top the Democratic Ticket
The Democratic Party made history this year by nominating a presidential candidate who supports marijuana legalization. And when Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, she doubled that distinction.
Walz, who in 2023 signed a bill that legalized recreational marijuana in Minnesota, has a longer and more substantial record of supporting drug policy reform than does Harris, a latecomer to the cause. But both Democrats are bolder on this issue than their Republican opponents or President Joe Biden, who endorsed Harris after dropping out of the race in July.
As USA Today notes, “Harris has been criticized for aggressively prosecuting weed-related crimes when she was California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney, particularly given the racial disparities in punishment nationwide.” She opposed a California legalization initiative in 2010 as San Francisco’s district attorney; laughed at a question about legalization in 2014, when she was running for attorney general against a Republican who favored it; and declined, as California’s attorney general, to take a position on the 2016 initiative that legalized recreational use in her state.
As a senator in 2018, Harris finally took the plunge, saying “we need to decriminalize marijuana nationwide.” Later that year, she cosponsored a bill that would have repealed federal prohibition, and she introduced a similar bill in 2019.
Meanwhile, as a Minnesota congressman from 2007 through 2018, Walz repeatedly supported legislation aimed at preventing federal interference with state medical marijuana programs, beginning his first year in office. He thought that protection, which Congress ultimately approved in 2014, should be extended to state-licensed businesses serving recreational cannabis consumers. He also backed a bill designed to protect financial institutions that serve the cannabis industry.
Prosecutorial discretion is the only thing that shields recreational marijuana suppliers from the threat of federal criminal charges and asset forfeiture. When Jeff Sessions, former President Donald Trump’s first attorney general, rescinded a memo supporting such forbearance in 2018, Walz criticized him. Sessions is “dead set on overruling states that have legalized recreational or medical cannabis, including [Minnesota],” Walz complained. He promised to “keep fighting alongside the 83% of vets & caregivers who support legalizing medical cannabis nationally.”
By 2017, when Walz was running for g
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