WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) called on Secretary of State Jeff Sessions to leave “grandma’s medicinal marijuana” alone and argued against reversing progress on the legalization of the drug during her speech at the Center for American Progress’s 2017 “Ideas Conference” Tuesday.
Harris said:
This administration and Jeff Sessions want to take us back to the Dark Ages. Sessions has threatened that the United States Department of Justice may renew its focus on marijuana use; even in states like California where it is legal.” She suggested, “What California needs is support in dealing with trans-national criminal organizations, dealing with issues like human trafficking; not going after grandma’s medicinal marijuana. Leave her alone.
Earlier this month, Sessions told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the Justice Department will commit to enforcing federal laws on marijuana in an “appropriate way.”
“[M]arijuana is against federal law, and that applies in states where they may have repealed their own anti-marijuana laws,” Sessions told Hewitt. “And I’m not in favor of legalization of marijuana. I think it’s a more dangerous drug than a lot of people realize.”
Harris admitted on Tuesday, “and while I don’t believe in legalizing all drugs. … We need to do the right thing and smart thing and decriminalize marijuana. … And finally, we need to hire progressive prosecutors.”
America is in the midst of a heroin and opioid addiction epidemic, a point Harris suggested could be addressed by “making progress on a critical policy issue.” She said, “We need a national drug policy that finally treats substance abuse, not as a crime to be punished, but as a disease to be treated.” Her statement was met with applause. She called for more government spending to address the issue. “We need to fund, not defund, the office of Drug Control Policy.”
Harris — a former criminal prosecutor and California attorney general — was critical of the War on Drugs, calling it an “abject failure.”
“I saw the war on drugs up close and let me tell you the war on drugs was an abject failure,” Harris said. “It offered taxpayers a bad return on investment, it was bad for public safety, it was bad for budgets and our economy, and it was bad for people of color and those struggling to make ends meet.”
She said, “Nancy Reagan told us to ‘just say no,’ and President Clinton signed the Three Strikes law.” She added, that despite those efforts, “illegal drug use is higher than it was at the height of the war on drugs.”
She criticized the tens of billions of dollars spent annually on “nonviolent drug offenses, which could otherwise have been devoted to unsolved homicides and violent crime.” She said, “Instead of focusing on prevention, we spend 80 billion a year in reaction, locking people up,” then called for “shutting the door” to incarceration for non-violent drug use.
Harris said that it is unjust that “Instead of going after violent crime, drug cartels, and traffickers,” Sessions is “worried about the neighborhood street-level drug dealer.”
In some parts of the United States, heroin is easily and often accessible in open-air markets. An article in the Los Angeles Times describes the epidemic’s effects in Philadelphia:
Veteran narcotics agents describe the neighborhood, four miles from the Liberty Bell and about seven from the Wells Fargo Center where Democrats will convene Monday, as among the most flagrant open-air drug markets on the East Coast.
“The purity is the best on the East Coast, and it’s easily accessible,” said Patrick Trainor, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency in Philadelphia. “It definitely draws people.”
Harris noted that “Drug-addiction, by the way, is color blind. It doesn’t see red or blue,” referring to the Bloods and Crips, two infamous gangs born in California.
She concluded her talk by saying, “The time is now to fight for the values we believe in. And the time is not to fight a war on drugs, but a war on drug addiction.”
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