Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California admitted Monday that she has smoked marijuana in the past. And, according to her, she “did inhale.”
“Kamala Harris says she smoked weed in college—”and I did inhale””
Kamala Harris says she smoked weed in college—"and I did inhale" https://t.co/yHjMgtdEjS
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 11, 2019
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The 54 year-old senator gave a radio interview in New York this morning on WWPR’s The Breakfast Club. In the interview Harris, who recently entered the 2020 presidential race in January, said that she smoked a joint “a long time ago.”
“I have,” she said, after host Charlamagne Tha God asked if she had ever smoked. “And I did inhale,” she added, joking about former President Bill Clinton’s famous line in 1992 that he smoked marijuana in college but “didn’t inhale.”
Senator Harris also pushed back on accusations that she opposed legalizing marijuana.
“That’s not true,” she said. “Half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me?” She added, laughing.
The Breakfast Club posted a tweet with the Harris interview, as shown below.
Hear what #KamalaHarris thinks about legalizing marijuana 💬 pic.twitter.com/YGZlCAKUZ0
— The Breakfast Club (@breakfastclubam) February 11, 2019
She confirmed that she supports legalization, a stance she expanded on in her new book where she wrote that it was time to legalize and regulate marijuana. She also said:
“We need to expunge nonviolent marijuana-related offenses from the records of millions of people who have been arrested and incarcerated so they can get on with their lives.”
“I think that it gives a lot of people joy, we need more joy,” she said during her interview on Monday. Last year, Harris backed fellow 2020 candidate Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) proposed bill to decriminalize pot.
Harris has been criticized for laughing off a question about legalization of recreational marijuana in 2014 when she was running for reelection as California Attorney General.
In the past five years, however, support for legal recreational pot has increased, with 62 percent of Americans saying in an October poll that they support legalizing marijuana.
Since entering the presidential race, Harris has gotten tremendous publicity and is currently considered the front runner by many people. She is progressive, yet was a tough prosecutor and state attorney general. She has great appeal to women — especially minority women voters who are the bedrock of the Democratic Party.
Some observers believe that she would be a formidable candidate and could even be Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.
The pot issue is a just a sideshow to her candidacy, but every time Kamala Harris appears in public she strengthens the perception that she may be the Democrat to beat in the 2020 election.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
