While I don’t agree with the criminalization of marijuana, it’s really rough when it comes to a prosecutor and a law they may not like. Step back and ask the question, “should an Attorney General (AG) be allowed to not prosecute laws they don’t agree with?” You might be willing to say, “yes” for laws you also don’t agree with; but, what happens when it starts to cover laws you want to see enforced? Should “prosecutorial discretion” effectively allow an AG a complete veto power over the laws as passed by the State and Federal legislatures?
As much as it may suck for the person in that position, it would be really bad for democracy to allow that sort of power. We empower an AG to enforce the law as written. But, we also expect that they will enforce the law as written. So ya, I would expect that Harris (or her office), as AG, prosecuted marijuana cases. That’s really what the whole “rule of law” thing means. It means the laws, as written, being enforced on all people. And it’s up to us, the people, through our representatives to get that law changed.
And hopefully, this will work out to be more than an empty campaign promise. Though, I don’t plan to hold my breath.
I haven’t heard that, do you have a source? My understanding is that she particularly went after violent crimes while showing leniency and seeking alternatives to incarceration towards non-violent offenses during her time as a prosecutor.
But it is fair to talk about Harris’ complex relationship with marijuana.
As a senator, Harris championed marijuana decriminalization and eventually legalization. She signed Senator Cory Booker’s marijuana legalization bill in 2017, and she also introduced her own bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.
But as an attorney general, her record is much more complicated. Harris oversaw roughly 1,956 misdemeanor and felony convictions for “marijuana possession, cultivation, or sale,” according to Reuters. However, defense attorneys and prosecutors in Harris’ office told Mercury News that most of the people convicted during this period did not serve jail time. And convictions for marijuana did go down under Harris’ tenure as district attorney.
At the end of the day, calling Harris out on her previous role in convicting folks for marijuana crimes isn’t entirely unfair. But it’s also pretty misleading to pretend that she pulled a switcheroo on the issue just in time for the midterms.
This article spins it slightly differently, IMO, but still not solidly stating what I believed to be true. Bold added by me.
As district attorney in San Francisco, however, she had enforced cannabis laws and opposed legalized use for adults. She defended its usage for medicinal purposes, but her prosecutors convicted over 1,900 people on cannabis-related charges. When she was running for reelection as attorney general, she opposed legalizing marijuana for recreational use, which was supported by her GOP opponent.
That aside, it remains true that at this point it’s nothing but a campaign promise.
So far it’s just a campaign promise. I wouldn’t envy us yet. She made a career out of putting people in jail for MJ.
While I don’t agree with the criminalization of marijuana, it’s really rough when it comes to a prosecutor and a law they may not like. Step back and ask the question, “should an Attorney General (AG) be allowed to not prosecute laws they don’t agree with?” You might be willing to say, “yes” for laws you also don’t agree with; but, what happens when it starts to cover laws you want to see enforced? Should “prosecutorial discretion” effectively allow an AG a complete veto power over the laws as passed by the State and Federal legislatures?
As much as it may suck for the person in that position, it would be really bad for democracy to allow that sort of power. We empower an AG to enforce the law as written. But, we also expect that they will enforce the law as written. So ya, I would expect that Harris (or her office), as AG, prosecuted marijuana cases. That’s really what the whole “rule of law” thing means. It means the laws, as written, being enforced on all people. And it’s up to us, the people, through our representatives to get that law changed.
And hopefully, this will work out to be more than an empty campaign promise. Though, I don’t plan to hold my breath.
I haven’t heard that, do you have a source? My understanding is that she particularly went after violent crimes while showing leniency and seeking alternatives to incarceration towards non-violent offenses during her time as a prosecutor.
I went looking for one, and it seems not as cut and dried as I thought.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kamala-harris-record-marijuana-prosecutor-173249390.html
This article spins it slightly differently, IMO, but still not solidly stating what I believed to be true. Bold added by me.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/five-takeaways-from-kamala-harris-s-all-the-smoke-podcast-interview/ar-AA1rumR4
That aside, it remains true that at this point it’s nothing but a campaign promise.