Marijuana: Will not be an election issue in 2025

After almost a century, the war on marijuana is coming to an end. Four years after 18^t The amendment was repealed and Prohibition ended in 1933. Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act on August 2, 1937; during the 1930s, marijuana was spelled “marijuana”. This made the possession and sale of marijuana illegal.

On September 1, 2024, former President Donald Trump endorsed a pending Florida constitutional amendment to decriminalize marijuana. “In Florida, like many other states that have already given their consent, personal marijuana will be legalized for adults under Amendment 3,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social website. “Whether people like it or not, it will be done with the voter’s consent, so it should be done correctly.”

He added: “We don’t need to destroy lives and waste taxpayer dollars by arresting adults who were found to be in possession of marijuana. No one should have to mourn a loved one who died from marijuana laced with fentanyl.”

Today’s round of culture wars began a half-century ago, with marijuana smoking as a central battleground. On September 16, 1968, Vice President Richard Nixon appeared at the Anaheim, California, convention center as part of his presidential campaign. He announced that if elected, he would stop illegal drugs from entering the country that were “decimating a generation of young Americans.” November 5^tNixon defeated Hubert Humphrey and was elected president.

Just three months after taking office, Nixon convened the President’s Special Task Force on Narcotics, Marijuana, and Dangerous Drugs. According to one account, “He directed the committee chairmen to focus on reducing the trafficking of narcotics into the United States, especially marijuana.” Three months later, July 14th^the sent special message to Congress, which called drug abuse a “grave national menace.” Citing what he said was a sharp increase in drug-related juvenile arrests and street crimes between 1960 and 1967, Nixon called for a national drug policy at the state and federal levels.

On September 21, 1969, President Richard Nixon launched “Operation Intercept,” the first step in what would become the “War on Drugs.”(i) Under the plan, 2,000 U.S. Customs agents were sent to the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the importation of illegal drugs. In June 1971, Nixon formally declared a “War on Drugs,” emphasizing that “Drug abuse is the deadliest social problem in America.” Justin Reid has noted that “perhaps more than any other war in recent memory, the War on Drugs has outlasted administrations as both an idea and a physical reality.”

A half-century later, Nancy Reagan launched the postmodern prohibition movement. In 1982, she delivered her infamous “Just Say No” speech at Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California. In the 1986 speech, she declared, “There is an epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse in this country today, and no one is safe from it—not you, not me, and certainly not our children, because it has their names written all over it.”

Mrs. Reagan’s original campaign aimed to address a range of perceived youthful vices, including alcohol and drug abuse, peer violence, and premarital sex. Seeing an opportunity, a group of canny moralists, shrewd politicians, and innovative entrepreneurs seized the speech to deepen and intensify the ongoing culture wars. They created a new system of police-corporate repression, the domestic equivalent of what President Dwight Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.”

A quarter century later, Americans’ attitudes toward marijuana have changed.

Most surprisingly, Trump’s position contradicts the views of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who says legalizing recreational marijuana “would be detrimental to the quality of life” and “would turn Florida into San Francisco or Chicago”; Florida legalized medicinal marijuana in 2016. His position also contradicts his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). While a staunch supporter of states’ rights, he has opposed legalizing them. Ohio voters legalized personal recreational marijuana in November 2023, making it the 24th state to do so.^t state to decriminalize “drug.”

Vice President Kamala Harris once admitted, “And I got it,” with a chuckle. “I got it. It was a long time ago,” she added. “I think it brings joy to a lot of people. We need more joy in the world.” Vanity fair notes that many recent political leaders have used “bad pot” in their past, including the two Bush brothers, Al Gore, Barack Obama, and Newt Gingrich; Trump claims he has never smoked marijuana.

But Harris has taken a rollercoaster of positions on marijuana policy throughout her public career. While she long supported the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, as San Francisco’s district attorney, she oversaw the convictions of more than 1,900 people for marijuana-related offenses. In 2010, when she ran for California attorney general, she opposed allowing recreational marijuana sales. When she ran for reelection in 2026, Harris opposed legalizing recreational marijuana — a position her Republican opponent supported.

But as vice president, Harris says the current penalties for marijuana use are

“manifest injustice” and opposes the current classification of marijuana as more dangerous than fentanyl. She welcomed the support of President Joe Biden and Democrats for decriminalizing marijuana. That effort has focused on getting the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to move marijuana from a Schedule I drug — like heroin, LSD and ecstasy — to Schedule III, which is defined as having

“moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” If reclassified, marijuana would still be a controlled substance subject to federal rules and regulations.

Anticipating the reclassification of marijuana, Biden announced in October 2022 that he would use his executive powers to pardon “all prior federal marijuana possession offenses.” He subsequently pardoned thousands of people convicted of marijuana use and possession on federal lands and in the District of Columbia,

One can only wonder whether the issue of decriminalizing recreational marijuana will be brought up at the upcoming meeting on September 10.^t debate between Harris and Trump.