Watching the Biden announcement on social media in real time, followed by the ascension of Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket, was a rather dizzying affair.
First came the despair: everybody took it as a major defeat. But then, within minutes, came the flood of endorsements by Democratic leaders from across the spectrum: the Clintons, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and on and on.
On top of that, the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, were flailing, clearly caught by surprise even though people had been talking about this possibility for weeks. And within an hour, it was already clear that the campaign had been re-energized. Hope was restored. Some measure of it, anyway.
Given the vice president’s pedigree and background, this might seem somewhat surprising. Harris is a middle-of-the-road Democrat, and such people are supposedly politically toxic these days. And, like most middle-of-the-road Democrats, she has throughout her political career tended to equivocate and “flip-flop.” That’s as true of her stance(s) on cannabis as it is of any other topic.
But “flip-flopping” isn’t always a bad thing. We want politicians to have principles, but we also want them to be flexible and to change with the times. This is an inherent tension in democratic politics, but it’s a needed one.
Within that tension, the work of governing gets done. It’s where compromise happens, and compromise is needed in a democracy, or it’s not a democracy. But it’s not easy: flip-flop too much, especially on core principles, and you’re ineffective. Stick to your principles regardless of social change or your constituents’ desires, and you’re even more so.
Cannabis policy, as important as it is (especially to people it directly affects), most often isn’t a core principle. “Not throwing people in jail for possessing weed” is a core principle, but beyond that, everything about cannabis is open to debate.
Harris has, in the past, shown signs that this wasn’t a principle for her. But as with Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as a whole, she has evolved on the issue, as on other issues. Meanwhile, the Trump administration did nothing on weed and in fact (likely at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) rolled back and blocked some reforms.
Recall that Biden was once one of the most stalwart drug warriors in Congress. He spent most of his career opposing any kind of reform. He repeatedly referred to weed as a “gateway drug,” and he did that even after the theory had been roundly debunked. (Pot doesn’t “lead to” the use of stronger drugs like heroin for most people. Or, when it does, it’s just because pot is the most widely available and safest illegal substance.) Now, Biden seems at least open to decriminalization at the federal level and maybe even full legalization.
Harris’s evolution is at least equally pronounced. As a prosecutor in California at both the state and local levels, she got just short of 2,000 people convicted for cannabis crimes (it was, after all, her job; yet she seemed to go at it with vigor). But Harris is now fully on board with Biden’s stances, and she was instrumental in getting pot reclassified so that it will become Schedule III drug rather than a Schedule I drug.
Harris hasn’t weighed in on full legalization, but at least some observers are saying that she’ll likely come out in favor during the campaign. She’s no fool, and she realizes that she’ll gain a lot of votes for it, and lose very few if any at all.
“No one should be in prison simply for smoking weed,” she has recently said, echoing Biden. The implication of this, of course, is that it shouldn’t be illegal, or at least shouldn’t be a criminal offense. As rescheduling was being worked on, she repeatedly called pot’s Schedule I classification “absurd” and “unfair,” most auspiciously at a White House event on the subject in March, which she hosted along with rapper Fat Joe.
The important thing for cannabis advocates to remember, even if they think of Harris as a “cop” (which many do), is that she, like Biden, would be way better on this issue—and all issues—than Donald Trump would be. Authoritarian governments don’t tend to be reformers.
