Kamala Harris Makes Light Of The Marijuana Issue…And The Marijuana Movement Responds Indignantly (Even Her Jamaican Father Says Get Bent)

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris — no doubt guilt ridden (but is she really) about locking up thousands of people for marijuana possession while herself bragging about being too privileged to have to worry about the same consequences — got backlash from a fellow Presidential candidate in Davenport Iowa Sunday:

From Reason Magazine:

Booker’s point was that such lighthearted

comments tend to obscure the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are still arrested every year on marijuana charges, the vast majority of them for simple possession, and have to bear the burden of those criminal records. He made similar remarks during an appearance in Davenport, Iowa, on Sunday. “We have presidential candidates and congresspeople and senators that now talk about their marijuana use almost as if it’s funny,” he said. “But meanwhile, in 2017, we had more arrests for marijuana possession in this country than all the violent crime arrests combined.”
 

Booker, a former mayor of Newark, noted that black people are much more likely to be busted for pot than white people, even though they are only slightly more likely to be cannabis consumers. “In Newark, I’m sorry, the margins for error for my kids to experiment with drugs, like people often do, that margin is not there,” he said. “And then one kid gets one charge for possession of marijuana for doing things that two of the last three presidents admitted to doing, and what happens to their lives?” Booker, who recently reintroduced a bill that would remove marijuana from the federal government’s list of prohibited drugs and expunge federal records of “marijuana use or possession offense[s],” said, “Do not talk to me about legalizing marijuana unless in the same breath you talk to me about expunging the records of the millions of people that are suffering with not being able to find a job.”

Booker’s emphasis on expungement is commendable, and his knock against Harris is fair enough, given that she not only treated marijuana as a subject of levity during her radio interview but did not embrace legalization until last year and prior to that literally laughed at the idea.

Read the full article: Cory Booker Knocks Presidential Rivals for Joking About Marijuana