Robert F. Kennedy, a former 2024 presidential candidate who has since been tapped to join the transition team for former President Donald Trump after endorsing the GOP candidate, is drawing attention to Vice President Kamala Harris’s prosecutorial record on marijuana.
Amid increased attention to Trump’s position on federal and state-level cannabis reform issues, RFK Jr. shared a video of an earlier exchange between Harris and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) during a 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate when the then-congresswoman criticized the then-senator over marijuana-related prosecutions she oversaw as a California prosecutor and state attorney general.
“Tulsi Gabbard confronted Kamala Harris in this pivotal debate moment, demanding answers on key issues of accountability,” Kennedy said in a post on X, referencing the former congresswoman who has also joined the Trump transition team. “This revealing exchange highlights the importance of transparency and truth in politics.”
Kennedy’s highlighting the 2020 marijuana exchange is all the more notable given reports that Gabbard has been helping Trump with debate preparation in advance of his upcoming face-to-face with Harris next week.
While Trump himself claimed in a recent interview that there were “thousands and thousands” of examples of Harris putting people in jail over marijuana, typically the criticism has been based on an allegation that the San Francisco District Attorney’s office under her leadership incarcerated more than 1,500 people on cannabis-related convictions.
But that lower figure is still misleading. Data from the office that was featured in an investigative report from the Bay Area News Group showed that there were 1,956 convictions for misdemeanor and felony marijuana offenses from 2004 and 2010 when Harris led the office. But the number of people who were actually sent to state prison was 45. That said, it’s unclear how many people were sent to county jail, so the total figure may be higher.
Meanwhile, prior to dropping out of the race, Kennedy repeatedly promoted his comprehensive drug policy agenda, which he’s previously said would also involve legalizing and taxing certain psychedelics in addition to marijuana.
After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in June that he would not move to decriminalize cannabis if he were elected to the White House, drawing criticism from both sides, Kennedy shared on social media a Marijuana Moment article about DeSantis’s comments and contrasted them with his own agenda.
Also that month, he discussed his own 40 years of sobriety during an interview on the podcast “Club Random with Bill Maher,” declining Maher’s offer to smoke with him on the show. He didn’t appear to mind the host’s indulgence over the course of the chat, however.
Meanwhile, recent comments from Trump signaling support for Florida’s legalization initiative followed meetings with a GOP Florida senator and the CEO of the primary financial backer of the initiative, Trulieve’s Kim Rivers, sources told Marijuana Moment.
In more recent comments published on Tuesday, Trump said medical marijuana has been “absolutely amazing” for patients, and that the Florida legalization initiative is “going to be very good” for the state after it passes, which he expects to happen.
Following Trump’s announcement of support for the Florida cannabis legalization ballot measure, Harris’s campaign started working to remind voters that while in office, Trump “took marijuana reform backwards.”
In a memo from a senior campaign spokesperson, the Harris campaign accused Trump of “brazen flip flops” on cannabis. The Democratic campaign says it’s one of the Republican former president’s “several bewildering ‘policy proposals’ that deserve real scrutiny.”
Image element courtesy of Gage Skidmore.
Robert F. Kennedy, a former 2024 presidential candidate who has since been tapped to join the transition team for former President Donald Trump after endorsing the GOP candidate, is drawing attention to Vice President Kamala Harris’s prosecutorial record on marijuana. Amid increased attention to Trump’s position on federal and state-level cannabis reform issues, RFK Jr. Read More