Kamala Harris promises full marijuana legalization – is that a gamechanger?

Kamala Harris announced on Monday that if elected president, she would fully legalize adult recreational cannabis on the federal level – the first time a presidential nominee has taken such an unambiguous stance on ending cannabis prohibition.

As part of her pledge, she said she would take steps to ensure that Black men, disproportionately incarcerated and disenfranchised by the war on drugs, would stand to profit from the industry.

Vince Sliwowski, a partner at the cannabis law firm Harris and Sliwoski, said he “was happy to see it, because I like the messaging”, but added: “She can’t just snap her fingers and do it when she gets into office. It’s not something that can be done via executive orders.”

Griffen Thorne, also an attorney specializing in cannabis, felt the promise was “clearly political”, given the announcement came just three weeks before the election. Thorne and other experts the Guardian spoke to suspect Harris’s campaign is attempting to shore up numbers with Black voters, particularly Black men, who are currently less likely to support Harris than they were Biden, according to a New York Times poll.

“Federal marijuana legalization is a sound policy and supporting it is a smart strategy – not just with Black voters, but with Americans across the board,” said Cat Power, director of drug markets and legal regulation with Drug Policy Action.

“As a Black woman and the first person of color to regulate marijuana for both medical and adult use, I understand the challenges in creating legal marijuana markets that work for Black men. I also recognize the profound harms caused by federal prohibition.”

Power added that it makes sense for Harris’s plan to include provisions that will remove barriers for Black men in cannabis and other domains.

Notably, the pledge sets Harris apart from both her opponent and her predecessor. While Trump and Biden now support some level of cannabis legalization, Harris is the first to explicitly state that ending prohibition is a priority.

During his administration, Biden made a number of promises on cannabis, including to expunge criminal records for possession convictions and get cannabis rescheduled so that it is eligible for FDA approval. The DEA has made progress on rescheduling, but it won’t go through before the election.

And Biden only expunged a small fraction of cannabis-related convictions during his administration.

“It was kind of embarrassing, because he kept up on his website all this stuff he was promising,” said Sliwoski.

Meanwhile, Trump has changed his tune on cannabis during this election season, including by supporting an upcoming Florida ballot initiative that would legalize recreational cannabis. But the decisions he made during his presidency left a lasting sense of distrust among advocates.

“One of the first things he did was appoint war on drugs zealot Jeff Sessions as his attorney general,” said Sliwoski, “The industry was really on edge, at least for the first couple of years of Trump’s regime,” he explained.

Harris also distinguishes herself from Trump in calling for social equity provisions that help Black men benefit from the industry. But making such provisions work is tricky. Even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during Biden’s administration, Thorne pointed out that they were unable to successfully pass cannabis policy reform – in part because of disagreements about whether social equity provisions went far enough.

“They let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Thorne.

While some Republicans in Congress now support cannabis reform, Thorne adds, they are less likely to vote for bills with a lot of social equity stipulations.

Sliwoski suggests looking at the More Act to try to get a sense of what kind of provisions Harris might support if elected president.

Harris co-sponsored the bill when it was introduced in Congress in 2019. The act would require the Bureau of Labor Statistics to track demographic information about cannabis business owners and employees, and create a trust fund devoted to initiatives that help communities hurt by the war on drugs.

Vice-President Kamala Harris in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she announced her marijuana policy on Monday. Photograph: Brian Cahn/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

State-level laws have attempted similar initiatives, but they often fail – the state legal cannabis industry is still heavily dominated by already wealthy white men.

“Inequities in the cannabis industry are due in part to banking restrictions and the high cost of entry into the market,” said Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University. “Individuals need to have money at the beginning of the process, or they need wealthy investors, and white men tend to have more of both.”

Social equity initiatives didn’t fully address barriers to entry in the industry, and sometimes gave funding to people with dubious connections to the marginalized communities they were intended to serve, according to reporting from Politico.

Within the industry, reactions to Harris’s pledge are mixed.

“I’m not shocked to hear another politician make claims for federal legalization of cannabis in hopes of catching a few extra votes during an election year. It’s not the first time, but I do hope it’s the last,” said Caleb Counts, CEO of Connected Cannabis. “This industry has been strung along far too many times with far too many broken promises.”

On the other hand, Bryan Gerber, CEO of the rolling paper company Hara Supply, found the news encouraging as Harris’s support for cannabis reform predated her presidential candidacy.

“With Harris’s stance clear, it seems hopeful that she would sign a full-scale legalization bill or related legislation, such as increased medical marijuana access for veterans, social justice initiatives and industry banking reforms,” Gerber said. “This, of course, is only possible if Congress can successfully land a bill on the president’s desk.”