Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) recently bragged about smoking marijuana in college, but Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), her fellow 2020 rival, wasn't amused.
“I have," Harris admitted in a February radio interview, laughing. "And I did inhale. It was a long time ago, but yes. I just broke news.”
“Half my family is from Jamaica,” Harris added. “Are you kidding me?”
Harris noted that she was listening to Tupac and Snoop Dogg while inhaling. The drug, she reasoned, "brings people joy."
Booker (indirectly) expressed his disappointment in Harris's casual discussion on cannabis at a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa this week. (37:40 mark)
“We have presidential candidates and congresspeople and senators that now talk about their marijuana use almost as if it’s funny,” Booker told the crowd, without actually naming Sen. Harris. “But meanwhile, in 2017, we had more arrests for marijuana possession in this country than all the violent crime arrests combined.”
Harris, though, seems to agree with that last concern. In her now controversial February interview, she said one thing she did "take seriously" was the need to legalize marijuana. In part, she said, so there could be more research done on cannabis and to address the high rate of incarceration among minorities.
It's clearly an issue often on Booker's mind. He recently introduced the Marijuana Justice Act, which would end federal marijuana prohibition.
It’s not enough to simply decriminalize marijuana—we must repair the damage done to those communities that have been most harmed by the failed War on Drugs, and we must expunge the records of those who have served their time. https://t.co/woROsOp6Wb
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) March 18, 2019