Democratic Senator from California, Kamala Harris is a candidate for the already congested group of 2020 presidential candidates. In 2016, Harris was elected to be in the U.S. Congress. In addition to that, she was also the former attorney general of California and former district attorney of San Francisco. In her career, her signature issues have appealed and been focused on the rarely represented groups like women, people of color, and lower-class Americans. In the past, she has often confused people and her supporters by swinging to and fro between some policy positions. Nevertheless, her strong personality and debating skills have resulted in her being a top candidate in a short duration.

She is pretty outspoken about Maternal Health, she is in favor of banning Assault rifles. Apart from these, she even voices her endorsement for the Green New Deal which is a proposed measure and regulation made to approach climate change and the massive economic divide. Speaking of Green, her position on a very disparate ‘Green’ subject – Cannabis- has somewhat been in a very gray area in the past. During her professional career between the Attorney General of California and the U.S. Senate, she has been known to change her stance on multiple occasions.

This year alongside Jerry Nadler, who is the House Judiciary Chair, Harris declared a progressive bill that would basically decriminalize possession of Cannabis at the federal level. The law is named the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act. Many 2020 democrats support this combined effort of Harris and Nadler. This bill imposes a 5% federal tax on the businesses selling Marijuana. This tax would be utilized to finance grant programs that aid people who have been unreasonably penalized for Cannabis possession in the past.

Harris had once opposed Marijuana Legalization when she was the District Attorney of San Francisco. Hence the announcement of this bill creates a recent turn in Harris’s varying stance on the Legalization of Marijuana. Despite her oscillating positions on Marijuana in the past, Harris had made it clear that she is in support of Marijuana Decriminalization. In The Truths We Told, a book Harris wrote, she states and debates that all Cannabis use ought to be decriminalized. She further states, “We need to legalize marijuana and regulate it. And we need to expunge nonviolent marijuana-related offenses from the records of the millions of people who have been arrested and incarcerated so they can get on with their lives.”