Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for marijuana legalization is part of the Democratic presidential candidate’s “freedom agenda,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said at an event hosted by musician and marijuana icon Willie Nelson on Thursday. He highlighted Harris’s backing for the policy change as a key difference between her and current President Joe Biden, whom he said has “done very little” on the issue during his term.
The Colorado governor was among a number of politicians, celebrities and cannabis reform advocates who spoke at the online event hosted by Nelson along with his wife, Annie D’Angelo, and fellow Texas musician Dahr Jamail. Others speakers included entertainer Whoopi Goldberg, U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), travel writer Rick Steves and former NFL player Ricky Williams.
Nelson himself, along with Goldberg, emphasized that despite Harris’s past as a criminal prosecutor, she’s now fully behind putting an end to penalties around marijuana.
“If we want to see legalization become a reality, we have to do what we can to elect Harris,” the musician said. “We need you to drag your friends to the polls if need be.”
“At the end of the day, we can’t go on blaming her for enforcing the law when she was a prosecutor. That was the law, and that was her job,” he continued. “And we need to recognize when we have a real partner in this mission to legalization we’ve all been on, and in Vice President Harris, there’s no doubt that we have that partner.”
Nelson, who lives in Texas, also recently urged voters in Dallas to pass a marijuana decriminalization initiative that will appear on their local ballots in November. Early voting for that measure kicked off on Monday.
On Thursday, he also encouraged voters in Florida, South Dakota, North Dakota and other states to turn out and vote for cannabis reform as well.
Vice President Kamala Harris said it herself – it’s time to legalize it. Join me, #WhoopiGoldberg, @BrittNicx, @MissMargoPrice, Colorado Governor @jaredpolis & @pettersen4co for a Cannabis Community Zoom Call to rally support for her candidacy & all it means for healing,… pic.twitter.com/rm8TkITrR8
— Willie Nelson (@WillieNelson) October 23, 2024
Goldberg, who said she’s used marijuana to help manage menstrual cramps, explained that she believes Harris now understands cannabis prohibition as a failure following her experience as a district attorney in San Francisco and as California’s attorney general.
“She did her job, she put folks in jail, and now she’s saying, ‘Hey, listen, maybe under those guidelines, we made a mistake. Maybe we need to rethink this,’” Goldberg said of the vice president. “And anytime we can find growth in politicians, I say yay for them.”
“It’s really important that we get these things thought of as normal,” the she added. “When we talk about cannabis, it should not be something that is ever thought of as something harmful, because it’s not, and we have so many ways of using this, and Kamala knows this.”
Many of the speakers described Harris as the first-ever major party presidential nominee to ever call for marijuana legalization on the campaign trail. Polis called her “the first major party candidate to support leaving it up to the states.”
“People always like to talk about, ‘How are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris different?’” he said. “Well, Joe Biden has done very little on this. And finally, they have the rescheduling sitting there. We hope they approve it, but that’s just the first step.”
For Harris, Polis added, cannabis “is part of her personal freedom agenda,” grouping the issue with the vice president’s support for reproductive rights, marriage equality and other civil rights matters.
And despite President Donald Trump’s recent endorsement of cannabis legalization in Florida and certain other reforms, Polis said the Republican nominee already had a chance to enact reform from the White House and wasted the opportunity.
Blumenauer and Lee, both members of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, joined the webinar together and described Harris as a leader in the movement for marijuana reform.
“The progress we’ve made is unbelievable,” said Blumenauer, describing Democrats’ leadership on the issue as a “secret weapon” for the party. “If it weren’t for cannabis being on the ballot in Arizona in 2020, Joe Biden wouldn’t have carried those electoral votes,” he claimed. “The young people carried him across the finish line.”
“This is our secret weapon, and Kamala Harris has been on the forefront,” the Oregon congressman, who is not seeking re-election, continued. “She co-sponsored our MORE Act. She spoke out—not just in the campaign, but before. She has been on the cutting edge of cannabis legalization. And this is our secret weapon to win the election: It will motivate young people. It speaks to racial justice, to health and to public safety.”
Lee, for her part, asked viewers of the video event how many times they’d “ever heard a presidential candidate use the word ‘legalization’ of marijuana?”
“I don’t think any candidate has ever uttered those words publicly in a campaign,” she said.
Rick Steves, a travel writer and TV host who’s been a longtime advocate of state-level legalization, said that the election next month means that “right now, we’ve got an opportunity with Kamala Harris to end it—all of it—federally instead of state-by-state.”
“Pot is here to stay. You cannot wish it away,” he added, arguing that while regulation is needed to protect safety and ensure products aren’t accessible to children, the ability for an adult to consume cannabis on their own time should be protected as a personal freedom.
“I’m a hard-working, taxpaying, churchgoing, kid-raising—and now grandkid-raising—citizen of the United States,” Steves asserted, “and if I work hard all day long and I want to go home, smoke a joint and just stare at the fireplace for three hours, that’s my civil liberty.”
Another speaker, former NFL player Ricky Williams, said that while some political pundits have criticized Harris’s inclusion of her support for legalization in a broader plan focused on Black men as pandering, he instead sees the vice president’s message as one of understanding.
“The stories around this were, ‘She’s doing this to get the African American vote,’” he said. “And for me 100 percent worked, right? Because I know that she understands the experiences I’ve been through in Fort Bend, Texas, put in handcuffs and taken to jail because I had an eighth of cannabis on me.”
“When the officer realized who I was, he apologized,” Williams reflected, “and I realized how cannabis prohibition has been used to weaponize against the African-American community, and for me as a voter and as an African-American male to see that my vote could do something to change that so no one ever has to suffer that? I’m all in.”
Other speakers at the event included U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO)—who said Colorado’s cannabis legalization has brought in millions of dollars in tax revenue while underage use has in fact fallen—as well as singers Brittney Spencer and Margo Price.
“I’m looking at a joint, and I’m just like, ‘Man, I just want to spark it up right now, you know?” quipped Spencer when she joined the call. “But thank you all for having me, seriously.”
Spencer went on to say she supports legalization because of the toll that disproportionate cannabis policing has had on the Black community and because she’s experienced relief firsthand using marijuana to help manage symptoms of endometriosis. (A recent study found that women with endometriosis who used cannabis rated it as “the most effective self-management strategy to reduce symptom intensity” of the often painful inflammatory disease.)
The event hosted by Nelson and D’Angelo, announced earlier this month, was meant to emphasize “the importance of cannabis reform in America,” according to an earlier statement and came on the heels of Harris reaffirming her support for federal marijuana legalization and pledging to make it the “law of the land” if elected.
“I’m excited to bring together such an amazing group of people to talk about something we all care about deeply,” Nelson said in announcing the event. “Cannabis is a path to healing, opportunity and justice, and supporting leaders like Kamala Harris who understand that is crucial to putting an end to the federal prohibition and undoing the harms it caused to so many, particularly to communities of color where it has been disproportionately enforced.”
To that point, while Trump also recently endorsed a Florida cannabis legalization ballot initiative, as well as certain federal reforms such as industry banking access and rescheduling, Harris has stressed that her support for reform is rooted in a criminal justice-centered interest to right the wrongs of criminalization.
Late last month, Nelson also hosted Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) at his ranch in Luck, Texas. It’s unclear if the topic of marijuana reform came up, but O’Rourke has also been a longtime advocate for ending prohibition at the state and federal levels.
The singer said in 2018 that he’d be more than happy to smoke cannabis with a wide range of politicians, including Trump, former President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
For now, though, it seems Nelson’s ideal rotation centers around the Democratic candidates: Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), her vice presidential running mate.
Last month, Walz said he thinks marijuana legalization is an issue that should be left to individual states, adding that electing more Democrats to Congress could also make it easier to pass federal reforms like cannabis banking protections.
The Harris–Walz campaign has also accused Trump of lying about his support for marijuana reform—arguing that his “blatant pandering” runs counter to his administration’s record on cannabis.
Following Trump’s recent announcement of support for the Florida cannabis legalization ballot measure, the Democratic campaign has been working to remind voters that while in office, Trump “took marijuana reform backwards.”
For his part, Nelson, who owns the cannabis company Willie’s Reserve, also made headlines in 2019 after saying that he’d stopped smoking marijuana—while still consuming in other forms—his son later said that “it’s safe to say Willie will never stop enjoying Mary Jane.”
Former President Jimmy Carter also discussed a time when his son smoked marijuana at the White House with Nelson during his administration in a CNN documentary in 2020.
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