Washington
CNN
—
Vice President Kamala Harris convened a roundtable on Friday to debate hashish reform with musician Fats Joe and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear – the place she alluded to her personal function in what she described as an unequal felony justice system.
“I imagine that the promise of America contains equal justice below the regulation. And for too many, our felony justice system has didn’t dwell as much as that core principal,” stated Harris, who began her political profession as a prosecutor in California.
“And I say that with full information of how this method has labored, together with my expertise as a prosecutor,” she added.
The group attending the roundtable included individuals who have acquired pardons for marijuana-related convictions.
The roundtable comes as Harris travels the nation to awaken the Democratic base in regards to the prospect of voting for her and President Joe Biden a second time. Polling has proven that legalization has had bipartisan help in recent times – although that help has been sluggish to translate into legislative motion.
In 2022, Biden pardoned all prior federal offenses for easy marijuana possession and inspired all governors to pardon state offenses. The identical 12 months, Biden requested US Well being and Human Providers Secretary Xavier Becerra and the lawyer normal to start the executive means of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled below federal regulation.
It’s at the moment listed as a Schedule I managed substance – in the identical class as heroin. Through the roundtable on Friday, Harris referred to that classification as “absurd” and “patently unfair.”
Biden additionally talked about hashish reform in his State of the Union handle final week.
“Nobody needs to be jailed for merely utilizing or have it on their report,” Biden stated in his handle final week.
Harris repeated comparable sentiments on Friday: “I imagine – I feel all of us at this desk imagine – no person ought to must go to jail for smoking weed,” she stated.
“And what we have to do is acknowledge that far too many individuals have been despatched to jail for easy marijuana possession,” Harris added whereas acknowledging how the enforcement of cannabis-related legal guidelines have disproportionately impacted individuals of coloration.
Harris’ personal emotions on marijuana reform have evolved in line with her career.
In a 2019 interview with “The Breakfast Membership,” Harris admitted to using cannabis in college: “And I inhaled – I did inhale,” Harris instructed co-host Charlamagne Tha God in a reference to former President Invoice Clinton’s notorious “didn’t inhale” response to the same query whereas he was campaigning in 1992.
However as San Francisco’s district lawyer from 2004 to 2011, Harris oversaw scores of marijuana convictions and he or she opposed a failed 2010 effort that might have legalized marijuana in California, the Los Angeles Instances reported.
She referred to as for an finish to the federal authorities’s ban on medical hashish in 2015, stopping wanting full legalization.
In her 2019 ebook, Harris wrote that marijuana needs to be legalized.
CNN’s Holmes Lybrand and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.