For the first time since joining the ticket as President Joe Biden's running mate in 2020, Vice President Kamala Harris has called for the legalization of cannabis, signaling a possible shift in the administration's platform heading into the November elections. Harris told a room of cannabis pardon recipients at the White House that "We need to legalize cannabis," a participant in the meeting revealed.
Harris had already made news earlier in the day, calling on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reschedule cannabis "as quickly as possible" in public opening remarks before the closed-door roundtable with the clemency beneficiaries. But sitting below a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt after the media was cleared out of the West Wing's Roosevelt Room, the vice president raised her hands in the air and called for an end to federal cannabis prohibition, a longtime activist and pardon recipient who attended the event tells Marijuana Moment.
"Saying those words out loud—saying it in the Roosevelt Room—it did feel very meaningful," said New Jersey-based advocate Chris Goldstein, who recently received a pardon certificate from the DOJ after being formally forgiven for a 2014 cannabis possession case stemming from a protest advocating for federal cannabis policy reform. "It wasn't lost on anyone there."
Harris sponsored a cannabis legalization bill while serving as a U.S. senator and ran on the issue during her unsuccessful 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign, but she has not publicly called for the broad reform since signing on as Biden's running mate later that year.
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