“No one should go to jail for smoking weed,” the vice president said.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday called on the federal government to move “as quickly as possible” to change the way it officially classifies marijuana, saying that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”

“I cannot emphasize enough that they need to get to it as quickly as possible,” Harris said. “We need to have a resolution based on their findings and their assessment. This issue is stark when one considers the fact that on the schedule currently, marijuana is considered as dangerous as heroin ― as dangerous as heroin ― and more dangerous than fentanyl, which is absurd, not to mention patently unfair.”

Marijuana is currently listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the Drug Enforcement Administration. That classification designates it one of the most dangerous drugs possible, with no medicinal uses. Other substances in the same category include heroin, ecstasy and LSD. Marijuana advocates have been pushing for years for the federal government to either reschedule marijuana to a different category or deschedule it entirely.

  • Spiralvortexisalie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    So lies and deception? I don’t know who is left to deceive when this sounds like the position the WH had two decades ago (when Biden was in Harris’s exact role). Since then the only changes have been brought about by State’s thumbing their nose at the Federal Government. I can honestly say the argument for “State’s Rights” hold more promise for marijuana legalization than Harris’s words.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Neoliberals dont want elected to help people, they want to get elected.

      It’s why they can see something like this where a president could do something day 1, but waits four years before doing it, and call it smart strategy. Even when it’s not a political.process and the president can do it on their own.

      It’s why there’s always the focus on “stopping by the republican”.

      That’s all neoliberals want to accomplish, get in office and hold on as long as they can.

      Progressives want to get elected to help people, and have faith if you help people they’ll vote for you.

      There’s no sane reason for neoliberals to be running the Dem.party on national and state levels, but it’s a private party and they get an absolute shit ton of money from billionaires and corporations. So it’s very hard to kick their old asses out of power while also fighting off conservative extremist Republicans.

      But when the neoliberals wins, nothing gets fixed. Their dogs chasing a car, if they catch it they dont know what to do, so they lay down and wait for another car to drive by.

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
        0·
        8 months ago

        The problem is that this is potentially the only positive change they could make in people’s lives that might actually make money, so once they’ve done it, there’s nothing else that lines up with both the interests of the party and their voters. Even prison reform as a whole might be a net loss in spite of the current system’s incredible cost to taxpayers due to the chilling effect it has on social mobility and the slave labor that the bourgeoisie can profit off of.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          We can’t do the only easy thing we can do because then we won’t have any easy things we can promise to do that we just won’t!!!

      • Monkey With A Shell@lemmy.socdojo.com
        0·
        8 months ago

        Progressive idealism is all well and good, but without acknowledging the realities of a highly polarized world and the balances of power in play all it will ever be is idealism, never realized fact.

        Many of the broader growths in society didn’t have a defining ‘flip the switch’ moment and instead where the result of small changes that then where the building blocks to bigger ones after the smaller steps where accepted as normal parts of society.