Harris is from Oakland. She gets it. There are nice dispensaries everywhere in Oakland. Even in very family-friendly or affluent parts of town.
You do understand she is the one that was jailing black men on possession charges because it made her look good, right?
Our policy was that no one with a marijuana conviction for mere possession could do any (jail time) at all,” said Paul Henderson, who led narcotics prosecutions for several years under Harris. Defendants arrested for the lowest-level possession would typically be referred to drug treatment programs instead of being charged, and weightier charges for marijuana sales would routinely be pleaded down to less serious ones, he said.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/kamala-harris-prosecuting-marijuana-cases/
I sure hope so. The notion that there still are not free states when it comes to cannabis is just beyond ridiculous.
She’s the VP right now. There is nothing stopping her from putting forward legislation on marijuana.
VPs cannot introduce legislation. When she was senator she did co-sponsor a bill in 2018 to legalize weed federally
What are you talking about. Anyone can write bills. If you want to argue semantics yes she can’t actually call for a vote on a bill but there is nothing stopping her from writing the bill and telling the American people that the plan is out there and the bill just needs to be sponsored by a member of congress.
There already has been one introduced into this congress to do exactly that. With the Republican control in the house it hasn’t gotten anywhere but it already exists
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5601
So what you’re telling me is this is another empty promise from Kamala Harris. We need to expect better from our politicians. Just because she isn’t trump doesn’t mean we have to circle jerk around her. It’s possible to criticize while also still voting for a person.
So you’re saying the expectation should be that she should be able to solve every problem without any direct power? Harris could only do more if she were president. The only people that can currently do anything on it are the president and congress.
Biden for his part started the process to move it to schedule 3 which would give medical legalization. Harris could start the process for full legalization if she were elected
Paywall, didnt read
Last year Michigan received about 290 million in weed taxes, around 90 went to municipalities and county governments, 100 million to schools, and 100 million to roads.
It’s crazy to me how cheap it is. Like, they could double the taxes and it would still feel incredibly affordable when compared to alcohol.
What are the prices in Michigan? One of the complaints in Colorado is that the prices (for those without red cards, anyway) were set so high that some people were still resorting to the black market.
It was cheap and high quality in Colorado for the first few years, just long enough to kill off the black market. Now it’s not as strong and has doubled in price. I only do edibles so I can’t speak to the plant quality but the THC content per serving gets lower every year it seems.
I personally think it’s a good thing. Some of that stuff was fucking military grade just because they could.
If you shop around you can get joints for one dollar. Way cheaper than the black market
Michigan is dirt cheap. $80 ounces are pretty common. $40 for an ounce of shake if you avoid border towns like Monroe. Even the Monroe dispensaries are cheaper than the Ohio ones that just opened, so everyone in NW Ohio still travels north for it since they dave moeny.
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god i wish we would do the same across europe
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.
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 haven’t heard that, do you have a source?
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
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.
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.
AGs choose which laws to enforce or not. That’s generally their job. They choose how to distribute resources available by selecting which cases to pursue.
It’s common for them to not pursue cases. It’s more common for them to pass up on pursuing a case against someone with wealth. In that case it’s more likely they’ll waste resources on someone who can lawyer up, draw the process out, and often get the case thrown out.
Possession cases are easy and seen as being hard on crime which is politically motivated as it gets you reelected by conservatives and liberals alike.
They have that power and use it frequently to disservice the poors/eccentrics while ignoring the transgressions of the wealthy.
if it is fully legalized at the federal level it has the potential to put a gigantic dent in the the housing crisis
How?
Hempcrete… Hemp will grow in under 3 months… You can dry the stalks chip them, and mix with lime. The plant also provides microgreens, proteins and oil.
The issue is that cannabis regulations are too spotty which is a limiting factor for widespread adoption.
Interesting. I’ll need to look into hempcrete. I’ve heard of mushroom construction materials, but never hemp.
Please explain more.
We build houses…
… with weed
So she plans in taking about it even after the election?
Just a reminder that she was responsible for putting thousands of people in jail for petty marijuana crimes… but you know. Democrats are allowed to change their stance on things… Republicans aren’t… right?
Prosecutors prosecute, not legislate. She won’t be a legislature if she becomes president either.
Shit. I love that she came out for it but this means the race is closer than we thought. Fuxing vote people!
Trump told the crowd, “One rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out, and it will end immediately. End immediately. You know, it’ll end immediately.”
You see, we shoot them in the head to send a message. /s
I think we should start adopting all of Trump’s shitty day-one policies.
- We win, the purge starts on domestic terrorists for a day, terrorism will ‘end immediately’
- Kamala gets to be dictator day one only, like how trump says. She deports all republicans to the nations of their ancestors.
- Courts packed with 29 more SCOTUS justices.
- Build a wall between Texas and the US
If all of this is fine for Trump to do, then why not Kambala??
She deports all republicans to the nations of their ancestors.
Believe me, they don’t want these people either. However, my understanding is Russia has open arms for disenfranchised Republicans. Please, don’t let me stop you. No taksies backsies though.
She deports all republicans to the nations of their ancestors.
😂 🤣
The president can order agencies to reschedule it, which makes it defacto legal in a lot of states, and means federal employees in states where it’s legal can use, including military.
She should do that asap, because the fight to actually legalize is a lot harder.
I don’t want to see her say it needs to be legalized and then refuse to take any step thats not the hardest
Rescheduling is a lot more complicated than that. The president can not just wave a wand and make it legal. Congress could pass a law doing so, but they are not going to do that. The other way is via the Controlled Substances Act which is, to put it mildly, is a cluster fuck.
In a nutshell, administrative rescheduling begins when an actor—the Secretary of Health and Human Services or an outside interested party—files a petition with the Attorney General or he initiates the process himself. The Attorney General forwards the request to the HHS Secretary asking for a scientific and medical evaluation and recommendation, as specified by 23 USC 811(b-c). HHS, via the Food and Drug Administration conducts an assessment and returns a recommendation to the Attorney General “in a timely manner.” The Attorney General, often through the Drug Enforcement Administration, conducts its own concurrent and independent review of the evidence in order to determine whether a drug should be scheduled, rescheduled, or removed from control entirely—depending on the initial request in the petition.
If the Attorney General finds sufficient evidence that a change in scheduling is warranted he then initiates the first stages of a standard rulemaking process, consistent with the Administrative Procedures Act. During rulemaking and consistent with Executive Order 12866, if the White House—through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of information and Regulatory Affairs—determines the rule to be “significant,” it will conduct a regulatory review of the proposed rule—a very likely outcome given the criteria in the EO.
FYI, Biden already initiated this process to reschedule marijuana in 2022. At this point, it has been reviewed and the Attorney General has submitted a rule change to the DEA. They will have a public comment period which they will no doubt drag out as long as possible. If approved, marijuana will be reclassified at the same level as steroids (schedule III). It is disappointing that Biden only requested changing the schedule rather than descheduling it all together. Not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than now.
It is disappointing that Biden only requested changing the schedule rather than descheduling it all together. Not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than now.
Which is actually the reasonable thing to do here. Marijuana is not something that doesn’t have brain-altering side effects. It has pretty clear effects which could impair driving, etc - It doesn’t need to be descheduled completely; that would be asinine.
Driving under the influence is completely seperate and would still be illegal. Same as it is for alcohol
Is alcohol scheduled? Is it regulated? I feel like morons are making excuses for control because it’s got stigma. You know the real reason weed is a schedule 1?
Mostly racism towards Mexicans plus fear that the hemp industry would bankrupt some old rich families.
I’d love for alcohol to be scheduled too. Make 'em all Schedule V. I’m tired of seeing “First DUI” cases get slaps on the wrist and a driving course.
Public education, impound, and jail time for DUI have had the most impact. You don’t need to schedule alcohol to do that. And you don’t need the age 21 drinking law.
Take your prohibitionist bullshit and shove it puritan. Wanna lower DUIs then advocate for expansions to public transit.
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Wow. Just wow.
You’re weak, and you need substances to abuse in order to continue on your pathetic existence.
There are plenty of reasons to drink a beer other than not having the “steel to handle the real world” on your own.
For instance, having to deal with annoying pricks like yourself.
Aw did a strike a nerve puritan, sorry to break it to ya but im one of my clean kinsmen fun thing about extreme genetic drug resistance ya dont feel shit to it. Alcohol taste like shit as well, closest I get is sweet cider.
I just aint into telling folks what to do, so long as it aint too damaging to other folks. Plus im bound to the bloodlust of mine kin not the alcoholism of mine ancestors. Regardless what you see as a moral failure I see as what is folks enjoying themselves. Sure it can be self destructive but whomst am I to judge I enjoy fighting to a utterly unhealthy degree.
So in summary can ya go feed thineself to a Joshua Tree theys gettin’ hungry.
Greetings from europe, I fucking love trains. Trains are the best. Would recommend trains every day.
So technically, the president could order the people he is in charge of to deschedule the drug and to do it immediately by everyone agreeing that the change is not significant.
If they refuse he could just keep firing people until someone agrees.
The law requires certain time frames for comment periods and he cannot just ignore those. He also cannot just fire anyone he wants. That is one of the things Project 2025 includes. Giving the president to fire any federal employee at will is a bad idea.
The only immediate thing he might do is issue an executive order making Marijuana a very low priority offense and telling DoJ to direct limited enforcement and prosecution resources elswhere.
Well I’m sure the persons in question will be highly motivated to follow through and expedite the process with seal team six accompanying them to work every day
Nope, the president doesn’t have the legal authority to give that order. He has the legal authority to order them to consider the question, which is the process that’s going on.
Right but he he has the power to fire them, or order someone else to fire them.
Holy shit the NSA, FBI and CIA will finallyl get competent, weed smoking engineers.
There would be full divisions of stoned furries.
PirateSoftware’s CEO, Thor, once saidnl in a stream how national security relies on furry conventions flights making it to and from conventions safely, and that there is nearly no bigger single point of failure on our security infrastructure. Those planes go down and we have a serious problem.
I think he’s right.
Wait, are you saying that our national security is run primarily by furries? Serious question, not sure if I’m misunderstanding you.
A massive amount of technical infrastructure is run by furries, both private and public.
That is what Thor implied in the stream I’m scanning for it so I can link it. I found this quickly but struggling to find the thing In referring to.
Wait the CEO of PirateSoftware is named Thor? I cant tell if thats extremely cool or extremely dorky, actually its both I named my dog Malcador and have a kitten named Jurgen I cant judge.
I mean it’s both, that dude has a voice pretty close to what you’d want a programmer named Thor to sound like. He runs a ferret rescue. He used to be Red Team for DoD and would Penntest nuclear power facilities, and now runs a gaming studio. Very interesting dude.
Edit: His father is the WoW guy from South Park. And If you ever got banned from World of Warcraft for cheating, it was Thor’s team that probably caught you.
Biden already started that process to move it to schedule 3. It’s been moving through slowly but it’s got a public hearing on December 2nd
The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of full deschedule/legalization, but all he’s pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they’ll probably go to 2 because fuck you that’s why. Hopefully Harris can lean into it a little harder than Biden has.
The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of full deschedule/legalization, but all he’s pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they’ll probably go to 2 because fuck you that’s why
The Lesser Evil Party in a nutshell 😮💨
Granted, it’s of course still a MUCH lesser evil than the American Fascist Party, but fucking HELL! Your very bleak guess is probably the best case scenario with these fuckers!
all he’s pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they’ll probably go to 2 because fuck you that’s why
I figure you’re partially joking but they can’t really make it 2. The HHS recommendation was 3 and even the DEA kind of has to agree even if they don’t want to. It would have been super controversial to do something else, they’re mainly supposed to follow it through with the rulemaking process unless they’re willing to make a serious case. And even then it would probably be to leave it where it is.
One of the theories going around as to why they added the hearing is that they wanted to take the heat off themselves for the call they’ve made by really drawing out the public consultation. Like people will be mad at them for following the recommendation so they want to make a big show of the fact they’re listening to concerns etc.
Hopefully Harris can take some stronger action or legalize through executive order or something. Schedule III is better but it’s then in the same class as ketamine. No judgement of people who like ketamine but COME ON
Interesting, didn’t know that about the process, TIL. So am I reading you right that they’re effectively locked into reschedule to 3 no matter what now due to the HHS recommendation? Or do they still have the option to just not change a thing as well?
Yeah my understanding is that since HHS said “the science suggests it should be in 3,” the DEA would have a bit of a challenge making any other rule. The schedules (theoretically) tell you what the addiction risk and medical value of a substance is, with lower risk & more effective medicine being the least restricted. So since HHS made that determination and the DEA are not scientists, it would be kind of wild for them to try to argue with that.
I think technically they could propose anything they like, but 2 would never go through because there’s no basis for it, and I think even keeping it in 1 would be a difficult sell with Biden having called for the review and the recommendation being what it was. Plus as you said most public comments (and experts) said they didn’t go far enough.
Honestly I think they’re stuck. They probably can’t just come out and recommend descheduling (and going by public statements probably don’t want to) but the current position is untenable. So they have to just sign up for the “better but nobody is especially happy” option HHS gave them
One thing I wish I understood more was whether Harris could just legalize through an executive order. Biden (and now Harris) said nobody should go to jail for weed but schedule III does not solve that problem at all.
The classification problem will lead to the DEA gaining control of all the dispensaries in every state.
Maybe I’m being alarmist, but rescheduling Marijuana is worse than leaving things alone. Oversight by the DEA is the wrong way to go.
Yeah I wouldn’t say alarmist but this is likely a non issue. Under the current system, every legal state is breaking federal law in a bunch of ways, but the DEA and other agencies have not acted. Technically putting it in schedule III would mean it could be treated like other substances in that schedule, available only with FDA oversight, but that is not likely. Basically everything has been totally hands off so far, so it’s very unlikely that the government reducing the level of control of cannabis would lead to agencies increasing their control.
The biggest threat at the moment imo is a Trump presidency, but based on his comments about Florida’s ballot initiative, his “change with the wind” opinion is currently also in favor of not sending people to jail for it.
As a senator Harris introduced bills that would’ve fully legalized it. Meanwhile I don’t think Biden ever publicly said he wanted full legalization
I think there’s pretty good odds she would go further than Biden in executive action alone
Biden was calling it a gateway drug just before entering the office of president. I don’t believe he’s evolved personally at all. Policy, which is kind of weak, may be another thing. But I don’t think the man sees any value in marijuana, for anybody.
Is anyone actually surprised that Biden is extremely anti-narcotics given his son’s battle with drug addiction?
Harris doesn’t have the same baggage. If she were at the helm, I think she’d follow through.
But that’s just the point. Part of marijuana adoption is getting away from worse drugs. There is plenty of supporting data at this point. The sooner people see this they’ll see where the bar ought to be set. This is only one example of course.
One of the best ways to get through withdrawal symptoms is Marijuana. When I was getting off some pretty rough mental meds, Marijuana allowed me to keep going.
He’s too old. Society has moved beyond him on this and it’s an example of why we need to start electing younger people.
Yeah at best Biden probably only is in favor of it for textile products and maybe CBD derivatives for medical use. Which mind you is still a massive improvement over damned near every president since it was putlawed but still a woefully insufficient, a solid summary of Biden now that I think about it.
Here’s hoping!
Plus this post is literally about her going to the “All The Smokes” podcast and calling for legal weed there. Could not imagine Biden doing
Schedule 3 for weed is a joke when Xanax and Ambien are schedule 4
It’s moving slowly because the DEA and police want it to stay illegal because that’s where half their funding comes from
I’ll believe it when it happens. I can only get my hopes up so many times
Saying, “we need to” is about as noncommittal as not saying anything at all. That’s like my girlfriend pointing out that the kitchen is a mess and me saying “yeah we really need to do the dishes”.
She has no control over it, the only thing she can do is what Biden did, ask them to investigate it and reschedule it. The executive branch does not make laws. That’s on the Senate/Congress. The number of people arrested for marijuana by the federal government isn’t the number of people in prison/jail for it. They are/and will be arrested by states. A law must be written to superseed state laws on marijuana… As the president cannot pardon people from state laws.
Vote for new senators/Congress members… The only 1 the president puts in place is the Vice President in the Senate.
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