In a recent interview, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, attacked Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris over her marijuana-related prosecutions.
In a Monday interview on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” former President Donald Trump criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her prosecutorial record on marijuana. Trump asserted that Harris, during her tenure as a prosecutor, disproportionately targeted Black individuals for cannabis offenses.
“She was a bad prosecutor. She was a prosecutor of Black people,” Trump said. “She put thousands and thousands of Black people in jail over marijuana. But when it came to big crime—murders and everything else—she was weak.”
Harris’s record on marijuana has evolved over time. As San Francisco District Attorney, she opposed the legalization of marijuana and prosecuted numerous marijuana-related offenses. However, her stance shifted significantly in later years. Since 2019, Harris has advocated for the legalization of marijuana and the expungement of past cannabis-related convictions, a stance she has maintained since becoming vice president.
While serving as California’s Attorney General, marijuana prosecutions actually decreased, contradicting Trump’s portrayal of her record. This decline in prosecutions aligns with a growing trend towards decriminalization and legalization across the United States.
Trump’s own administration maintained a largely hands-off approach to state-legalized marijuana markets. However, his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, rescinded the Obama-era Cole Memo, which had provided guidance to federal prosecutors to deprioritize enforcement in states that had legalized marijuana. This move created uncertainty for state-legal cannabis businesses but did not result in a significant federal crackdown on the industry.
