The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has released a memo reaffirming its commitment to push for federal marijuana legalization and expanding cannabis clemency under a Harris administration if the current vice president wins the presidential election in November.
ACLU’s memo—titled “Harris on the Criminal Legal System: An Opportunity for Increased Accountability, Fairness, and Humanity”—notes that, as a senator, Vice President Kamala Harris sponsored a comprehensive cannabis legalization bill: the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act.
The civil rights groups says it intends on pressuring Congress to deliver on that reform.
“The ACLU supports the aims of the MORE Act and federal legislation that decriminalizes marijuana and allows states to undo the harms of the war on drugs,” it said. “As states continue to legalize marijuana, the ACLU will push a Harris administration to support federal legislation that includes critical decriminalization components, automatic expungements, and equitable opportunities for individuals and small business owners most impacted by the war on drugs.”
“The ACLU and coalition partners have advocated for legislation that would ensure marijuana legalization is grounded in racial justice and remove re-entry and employment barriers to individuals and communities that were directly harmed by the war on drugs. Vice President Harris has advocated for similar positions as a senator and during her previous presidential campaign.”
Most recently, before becoming the 2024 Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden bowed out of the election, Harris reiterated her support for federal marijuana legalization during a roundtable event with cannabis pardon recipients in March. However, she’s been silent on the issue since accepting the nomination.
The new ACLU memo also discusses clemency efforts in the criminal justice system, noting that Harris “has been a supporter of clemency for marijuana-related convictions, which keep countless individuals locked behind bars or create barriers to housing, employment, education, and stability.”
“Harris has previously called for reforms to the clemency process and to increase the use of clemency and sentencing review units,” the memo says. “We will encourage a potential Harris administration to commute sentences consistent with the categories identified above and for marijuana-related convictions.”
Meanwhile, a Democratic senator separately told Marijuana Moment at the Democratic National Convention last month that if Harris is elected president this November, she will “be ready to sign” marijuana reform bills into law. Other lawmakers similarly predicted more momentum on cannabis legalization at the state and federal levels under a Harris-Walz administration.
While the Democratic National Committee (DNC) 2024 platform that was formally approved at the convention omitted an explicit endorsement of decriminalization, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said he still backs the party document because of its focus on civil liberties, which he says transfers to cannabis. The platform also touted Biden’s marijuana pardons and rescheduling directive, while calling for expungements.
Separately, former President Donald Trump endorsed the marijuana legalization initiative on Florida’s November ballot, saying that “we do not need to ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them, and no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl laced marijuana.”
Harris’s campaign hit back at Trump in a memo, accusing the former president of “brazen flip flops” on cannabis and saying that while in office, he “took marijuana reform backwards.”
Before Biden dropped out of the race, his campaign played into the contrasting cannabis policy positions under Trump, with multiple email blasts and online advertisements that framed the incumbent as the better choice for those who support cannabis reform.
Harris did select Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, choosing a candidate who backed numerous cannabis reform measures in Congress, called for an end to prohibition when he was running for governor and then signed a comprehensive legalization bill into law in 2023.
As president, Trump largely stayed true to his position that marijuana laws should be handled at the state-level, with no major crackdown on cannabis programs as some feared after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama era federal enforcement guidance. In fact, Trump criticized the top DOJ official and suggested the move should be reversed.
While he was largely silent on the issue of legalization, he did tentatively endorse a bipartisan bill to codify federal policy respecting states’ rights to legalize.
That said, on several occasions he released signing statements on spending legislation stipulating that he reserved the right to ignore a long-standing rider that prohibits the Justice Department from using its funds to interfere with state-legal medical marijuana programs.
In a separate memo on Trump’s platform that ACLU released in July, it notes that his campaign’s pledges include “an aggressive revival of the severe approach to drug-crime prosecution introduced during the war-on-drugs era.”
“Proposals from Trump and his allies include intensifying federal crackdowns on individuals at the lowest level of the drug distribution chain by ‘rigorously prosecut[ing] as much interstate drug activity as possible including simple possession of distributable quantities,’” it says. “These measures will not make communities safer but instead exacerbate racial disparities and fail to address the root causes of the overdose crisis.”
That memo does not specifically mention marijuana policy under a Trump administration, however.
DNC has separately played up the Biden-Harris administration’s marijuana reform platform on social media—but it’s received some pushback after suggesting that cannabis has already been rescheduled and that the country’s “failed approach” to marijuana has now ended.
Separately, a series of recent polls found widespread majority support for cannabis legalization, federal rescheduling and marijuana industry banking access among likely voters in three key presidential battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has released a memo reaffirming its commitment to push for federal marijuana legalization and expanding cannabis clemency under a Harris administration if the current vice president wins the presidential election in November. ACLU’s memo—titled “Harris on the Criminal Legal System: An Opportunity for Increased Accountability, Fairness, and Humanity”—notes that, Read More