Following former President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of support for a cannabis legalization ballot measure in Florida, the campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris is working to remind voters that while in office, Trump “took marijuana reform backwards.”
In an 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.”
“On issue after issue, Trump is saying one thing after having done another,” the memo says. “For example: As a candidate in 2024, he suggests he is for decriminalizing marijuana – but as President, his own Justice Department cracked down on marijuana offenses.”
The claim appears to be a reference to the move by Trump-era Attorney General Jeff Sessions to rescind the so-called Cole memo, which provided guidance to federal prosecutors not to interfere with operations of well regulated state marijuana systems.
Although the change did not lead to a broad prosecutorial crackdown on cannabis, it caused widespread alarm and uncertainty at the time, with many in industry and state government worried that it signaled a shift away from the federal government’s tolerance of state-legal marijuana programs.
“Trump now suggests he is for legalizing marijuana – but as President, his own Justice Department cracked down on marijuana offenses,” says the memo, which was first reported by ABC News. “Trump’s Administration took marijuana reform backwards, withdrawing guidelines to limit prosecutions of marijuana offenses that were legal under state laws. Trump even proposed removing medical marijuana protections.”
Let’s be blunt,” it adds: “Trump is just making stuff up. And he hopes we will all memory hole his actual record and only pay attention to his shallow words.”
The memo argues that Trump’s latest position on marijuana is one of a number of issues on which the former president is flip-flopping, along with matters such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), the federal Child Tax Credit and how to tax workers.
Notably, while the new memo draws on Trump’s inconsistency on cannabis policy and messaging, it does not lay out the Harris campaign’s own vision on the issue of marijuana. Nor does it acknowledge the Biden-Harris administration’s mixed record on reform.
While Harris has advocated for cannabis legalization, President Joe Biden (D) has maintained opposition to that broader reform despite the fact that the vast majority of voters in his party support it, albeit while initiating a review into marijuana’s scheduling status and issuing mass pardons to people who committed possession offenses.
Nevertheless, Harris has a more defined position on cannabis issues than does Trump heading into November’s election. While critics, including Trump, have been quick to point to Harris’s prosecutorial record on marijuana, she also sponsored a comprehensive legalization bill in the Senate and called for legalization as recently as March during a closed-door meeting with cannabis pardon recipients.
Harris also selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, choosing a politician 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.
Trump, for his part, later criticized Sessions’s decision to rescind the Cole memo and suggested the move should be reversed, though in office he also failed to take meaningful action to further marijuana reform.
On several occasions, he released signing statements on spending legislation stipulating that he reserved the right to ignore a long-standing budget rider that prohibits the Justice Department from using its funds to interfere with state-legal medical marijuana programs.
Trump did at one point, however, tentatively endorse a bipartisan bill to codify federal policy respecting states’ rights to legalize.
The attacks from Harris continue a line of attack Democrats have been using for months now on the campaign trail.
Read more at Marijuana Moment