Harris shifts positions on marijuana and the death penalty

One of Harris’ most pronounced shifts was over the death penalty.

During a 2004 inauguration speech after her election as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris vowed to “never charge the death penalty.” She framed her choice as a moral one.

Harris softened her approach four years later, after launching her campaign for California attorney general. Amid a tightly contested race with Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, Harris said she would ”enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.” While other Democrats on the ballot cruised to victory , Harris barely won.

In 2010, when she was running to become California’s top law enforcement official, she opposed allowing marijuana sales for recreational use.

At the time, she said it would cause confusion in the state’s loosely regulated medicinal marketplace.

When running for reelection as California attorney general, Harris said she did not support legalizing recreational use of marijuana — a position endorsed by her Republican challenger.

By the time she was running for president in 2019, she had reversed course and was even joking about having smoked the drug.

“I did inhale,” she quipped during a radio interview, referring to smoking pot in her college days, twisting a line Bill Clinton used in his 1992 campaign to deflect criticism that he had used the drug.

Earlier this year, she said it’s “absurd” that the federal government classifies marijuana as more dangerous than fentanyl, and she criticized the federal classification of cannabis as “patently unfair.”