Biden Pardon’s Marijuana Convictions, But Now the Spotlights on His VP
President Biden just issued an executive order that pardoned all people with federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana. Biden said in a statement, “Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives … Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”
But this could be just another problem for the president because of the impact it may have on his 2nd in command, Vice President Harris. The spotlight may shift to the fact that the 1,956 people she convicted for marijuana crimes will not be pardoned since their convictions were not made at the federal level.
Harris worked as deputy district attorney from 1990 until 1998, and then she went on to work in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
From 2004 to 2010, Harris served as San Francisco’s 32nd attorney general. During her time as D.A., the 57-year-old secured 1,956 misdemeanor and felony convictions for marijuana possession, cultivation, or sale.
In 2006, she reportedly claimed, “The approach of my administration vs. the prior administration is I don’t think drug crime is a victimless crime.”
In 2010, she voted against Proposition 19, a measure to legalize recreational marijuana.
In May 2018, Harris flipped and announced her support for legalizing marijuana, claiming that “[t]oo many lives have been ruined by these regressive policies.”
Former San Francisco supervisor and assemblyman Tom Ammiano criticized Harris for the sudden change. “She was nowhere, zilch, nada, no help … It does leave a bad taste in your mouth about how sincere or how authentic she is,” he said.
During the second Democrat presidential primary debate in 2019, then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)said that Harris “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”
Gabbard said to Harris, “When you were in a position to make a difference and impact in these people’s lives, you did not.”
So this who issue could get a little sticky for the Biden team, just another day in the present White House.
