MJBiz - September/October 2024 - 30

HIGH STAKES
V O T E
HIGHEST
OFFICE
Stakeholders believe Harris would push marijuana reforms
forward, while Trump's intentions remain unclear
By Chris Roberts
F
or the cannabis industry, the
2024 presidential election
guaranteed a welcome
change from stagnant status quos.
That much was true even before
Vice President Kamala Harris'
surprise elevation to the top of the
Democratic Party's ticket in late
July.
For the first time since marijuana
reform became a popular issue
with American voters, neither
of the major-party presidential
candidates-not Harris, a Democrat,
nor former President Donald Trump,
the Republican nominee-appears to
be a risk to marijuana policy reform
or the existing $32.1 billion U.S.
cannabis industry.
Instead of which outcome is
least bad, the questions cannabis
executives are asking themselves
ahead of the November election
revolve around which of the two
major-party candidates will be
better-better for the industry and
better poised to compel Congress
to finally pass long-awaited reform
measures, including potential
federal marijuana legalization.
On that front, the cannabis
industry has a clear favorite in
Harris, a former San Francisco
district attorney and California
attorney general.
" We have a champion for cannabis
reform, and that is the Democratic
presidential nominee, " said David
Culver, the vice president of policy
for the U.S. Cannabis Council, a
Washington, D.C.-based lobbying
shop that counts major marijuana
multistate operators as members.
Evolving Attitudes
That is a welcome change from
Trump's first term, when he
appointed former U.S. Sen. Jeff
Sessions-an Alabama Republican
and noted prohibitionist who
compared marijuana to heroin-to
lead the Department of Justice.
It's also a near-complete
departure from the early Biden
campaign in 2019-20, when
advocates feared the sponsor of the
notorious 1994 federal crime bill
would find fault with state-level
adult-use cannabis legalization
while in the White House.
But Harris' stance also has evolved
on the issue.
As critics have said since 2019,
when Harris briefly challenged for
the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination-and memorably left
30 September-October 2024 | MJBizMagazine
Biden flustered during a debate
when she challenged him on his
role in ushering in the era of mass
incarceration-her own history on
marijuana is mixed, at best.
Though she deemphasized petty
drug arrests as San Francisco's
district attorney-and declined to
deploy criminal justice resources
against the city's nascent medical
cannabis industry in the mid2000s-her
office did oversee 1,900
marijuana-related convictions
between 2004 and 2011, when she
was California attorney general.
In 2010, she signed on to an
official ballot argument opposing
Prop. 19, an early adult-use
marijuana legalization effort.
At the same time, cannabis
advocates supported her bid to be
California's top cop-in part because
she was hands-off as district
attorney and in part because the
alternative, law-and-order Los
Angeles prosecutor Steve Cooley,
was much worse.
As California's attorney
general, Harris continued to have
a mostly hands-off approach
toward the state's blossoming
cannabis industry. It was the
Obama administration's Justice
MJBiz - September/October 2024

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