Vice President Kamala Harris chooses Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Marijuana momentKyle Jaeger noted that this means “the ballot now consists of two candidates who support legalizing marijuana” – a “historic first time.” Walz actually got to this position before Harris did. His record as a congressman from 2007 to 2018 included several votes in support of marijuana reform when Harris was still scoffing at the idea of legalizing marijuana, and he ran for governor in 2017 promising to “build a regulatory system” and regulate adult-use marijuana. tax.
As governor, Walz signed a bill legalizing recreational marijuana. He also supports legislation authorizing supervised drug consumption facilities, removing legal barriers to needle exchange programs and creating a psychedelic drug task force.
Beginning in 2007, his first year in Congress, Walz repeatedly supported legislation aimed at preventing federal interference in state medical marijuana programs. Those bills include the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, which Congress finally approved in 2014 and has been updated every year since. The spending rider prohibits the Justice Department from using appropriations to “prevent” states from “implementing” their medical marijuana laws. As interpreted by the court, it prohibits federal prosecution of state-licensed medical marijuana providers.
The same year Congress approved the restriction and the same year Minnesota lawmakers approved medical marijuana, Walz voted for an amendment aimed at protecting financial institutions that provide services to state-licensed marijuana providers. He also believes the protections provided by the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment should be extended to businesses serving the entertainment market. In 2015, the year after the first recreational marijuana stores opened in Colorado and Washington, Walz supported the McClintock-Pollis Amendment, which would have barred the Justice Department from also targeting those businesses.
Without such protection, prosecutorial discretion is the only means to protect recreational marijuana suppliers from the threat of criminal charges and asset forfeiture. In 2018, when Jeff Sessions, now President Donald Trump’s first attorney general, rescinded a memorandum supporting such leniency, Walz criticized the decision. Sessions “firmly opposes states that would legalize recreational or medical marijuana, including [Minnesota]”, complained Walz. He pledged to “keep up the fight with the 83 percent of veterinarians and caregivers who support national legalization of medical marijuana.
By 2017, when Walz ran for governor, he had become a strong advocate of legalization. “It’s time to establish an adult-use cannabis regulatory and tax system in Minnesota,” he said. Harris did not publicly support legalization until the following year.
as USA Today Noting, “Harris was criticized for aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related crimes while serving as California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney., Especially given the racial disparities in punishment across the country. While running for attorney general, she scoffed at questions about legalizing marijuana. “We need to legalize marijuana nationwide,” he said.
That year, Walz, who first became governor of Minnesota, directed state agencies to begin preparing for legalization, saying he wanted them to “put all the infrastructure in place.” Four years later, after Democrats won control of the state Senate, he signed the bill allowing adults 21 or older to possess two ounces or less of marijuana in public, sharing that amount with other adults, and at home Keep two pounds or less of marijuana and grow it. These regulations will come into effect in August 2023.
The Adult Use Cannabis Act also established the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), which is responsible for licensing and regulating commercial production and distribution. In addition to standard state and local sales taxes (for example, total sales tax in Minneapolis is about 8%), cannabis products are subject to a 10% retail sales tax. Local governments can regulate retailers and limit their numbers, but cannot ban them outright.
Minnesota’s first recreational dispensary opened on tribal land last summer. The OCM said “the process for a general license will be announced soon.”
Minnesota lawmakers addressed an overlooked issue in early recreational marijuana laws by requiring the automatic expungement of marijuana misdemeanors. In May, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced that it had deleted 57,780 records “nearly three months ahead of schedule.” The records are “no longer visible to the public in the Minnesota Criminal History System (CHS).” The department said it will “provide local criminal justice agencies with a list of each agency’s records that were deleted from CHS so that they can delete the relevant records from their own systems.”
The Adult Use Marijuana Act also establishes the Marijuana Expungement Commission, which reviews felony marijuana cases for resentencing or expungement under existing law. “Because each record must be considered individually,” DPS said, “this process can take several years to complete.”
Walz emphasized the expungement provision when he signed the bill. “It’s been a long journey with a lot of people involved,” he said. “What we know now is that injunctions don’t work. We’ve already criminalized a lot of people who are going to start deleting these records.”
Walz’s drug policy record likely won’t carry much sway in a Harris administration, especially since Harris already supports decriminalization and expungement of federal marijuana records (both of which would require congressional action). But it’s a belated sign of the times that both seats for a major party’s presidential candidates are occupied by politicians who join most Americans in opposing marijuana prohibition.
Neither Trump nor his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), are willing to go that far. Both Trump and Vance have said states should be free to legalize marijuana, but they have also expressed distaste for the policy. Vance voted against marijuana banking reform in committee last year, later claiming it would “open up banking resources to fentanyl traffickers and others.”
In an interview last May, Vance acknowledged that “you don’t want people to go to jail for having a dime bag,” and “fortunately, that doesn’t happen in most cases.” . But he added, “We haven’t quite figured out how this new regime can coexist with not contaminating our public spaces.” He said, “It’s very frustrating to me” that “you take your kids to a hotel in downtown Cincinnati. The restaurant, and then you walk by, and it smells like five people on drugs. I don’t want that,” Vance said. “We just need a different cultural sensibility if we’re going to go into this more open regime. People have to really take some responsibility and not do that around 6-year-olds.”
This seems reasonable. Vance’s objections seemed mild compared to those expressed by Trump, who said legalizing marijuana “terrible” and claimed it caused “some big problems” in Colorado. Still, he added, “If they vote for it, they will vote for it.”
