Despite Harris ‘ track record of overseeing almost 2, 000 convictions for marijuana-related offenses, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden said that people should n’t be imprisoned for using or possessing marijuana.
The Department of Justice took action on Thursday to categorize weed from a Schedule I medicine to a Schedule III drug with the claims made by Biden and Harris.
Currently, marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug along with heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide ( LSD ), and methylenedioxymethamphetamine, otherwise known as ecstasy, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency ( DEA ) website.
” No one should go to prison for tobacco weed”, Harris wrote in a blog on X on Thursday. We have pardoned “tens of thousands of people” who have been convicted of plain pot hands.
No one should go to prison for using marijuana.
We have pardoned tens of thousands of people who have been convicted of weed hands in federal court.
— Kamala Harris ( @KamalaHarris ) May 16, 2024
No one should be imprisoned for just using or possessing marijuana, according to a post on X Biden.
No one should be imprisoned for merely using or possessing pot.
— President Biden ( @POTUS) May 17, 2024
About 2, 000 views for marijuana-related acts were handled by Harris while he was the city attorney for San Francisco, according to information obtained by the Bay Area News Group and the Mercury News in 2019.
Former Republican Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (I-HI ) criticized Harris for her criminal record during a Democratic primary debate in July.
” Senator Harris says she’s proud of her history as a prosecutor, and that she’ll be a prosecutor leader, but I’m deeply concerned about this record”, Gabbard said at the moment.
According to a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, at least 1, 560 citizens were sent to state prison between 2011 and 2016 while the Free Beacon post, which Gabbard had been referencing, stated that this amount was approximately 1, 974.
The Mercury News explained:
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard criticized Harris for her marijuana convictions during the final presidential debate in July, saying she “put over 1,500 individuals in jail for marijuana breaches and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked pot.” Despite the fact that the majority of weed situations in the state are prosecuted by freely elected county district attorneys, Gambard was inconspicuous about citing numbers for all of California while Harris was solicitor general.
But, Harris had a lot of discretion when deciding which weed instances to prosecute and what phrases to get in the city as San Francisco DA from 2004 to 2010.
The store continued to report that information from the San Francisco district attorney’s office showed that while Harris had served as the DA, “her lawyers won 1, 956 offense and felony beliefs” related to growing, possessing, or selling pot.
Gabbard’s terms during the conversation came weeks after Harris had admitted during an exam in February 2019, that she had smoked pot, and therefore laughed.
