Vice President Kamala Harris is pledging to federally legalize marijuana, ensuring that access to cannabis is “the law of the land.”
If elected, she will “break down unjust legal barriers that hold Black men and other Americans back by legalizing marijuana nationally, working with Congress to ensure that the safe cultivation, distribution, and possession of recreational marijuana is the law of the land,” the Harris campaign said on Monday.
The Democratic presidential nominee’s cannabis plan to “legalize marijuana at the federal level to break down unjust legal barriers that hold Black men and other Americans back” is part of what her campaign calls an “opportunity agenda” aimed at winning the votes of African-American men in particular.
To that end, the campaign says Harris will “fight to ensure that as the national cannabis industry takes shape, Black men—who have, for years, been overpoliced for marijuana use—are able to access wealth and jobs in this new market.”
“This pathbreaking agenda includes…legalizing recreational marijuana and creating opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry.”
In contrast, the VP’s new plan says that former President Donald Trump’s administration “threatened federal prosecutions for marijuana in states where marijuana use is legal, continuing the unjust and disproportionate use of marijuana possession laws to put Black Americans behind bars.”
