Politics
Former NBA Player Says He Smoked Marijuana Before Interviewing Kamala Harris And Jokes He Might ‘Sneak Something In’ To White House If She Wins
Appearing on a recent podcast, Vice President Kamala Harris notably reiterated her support for legalizing marijuana for the first time as the Democratic presidential nominee. Now, in the wake of that conversation, a host of the show is acknowledging that he got high before interviewing Harris, joking that he might have to “sneak something in” to the White House if she wins.
“I smoked before I went. I pregamed as I was studying, just like I was watching game film,” said Matt Barnes, who played 14 seasons in the NBA and now works as a sports analyst a co-host of the All the Smoke podcast. “And then I headed over.”
Barnes, who was responding to questions about the interview while himself appearing on another podcast, The Dan Le Batard Show, said he didn’t smoke on-site at the interview, but he quipped that he might try to “sneak something in” to the White House in the future if Harris is elected president.
“I did not, unfortunately, get to smoke in the White House. But but if she wins, I was invited back, and I may try to sneak something in,” he said, adding, “Nah, I’m playing.”
As for the substance of his interview with Harris, Barnes explained that he was personally interested in digging into the details of criminal justice matters around cannabis but wasn’t sure if a deep dive would appeal to the podcast’s audience.
“We wanted to get into the weeds of stuff, but we only had 30 minutes,” Barnes said, noting that while some people fault Harris for her record as a prosecutor, the Biden administration has also pardoned people with past federal marijuana convictions and encouraged further relief at the state level.
“I did want to get into these,” he told Le Batard Show, but “knowing my fan base, and understanding that this stuff is interesting to me but it may not be interesting to our core audience…it was really a thin line.”
Barnes and co-host Stephen Jackson, another former NBA player, ultimately spoke to Harris for close to 45 minutes, during which the candidate repeated a common Biden administration refrain that “people should not be going to jail for smoking weed.”
“I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior,” Harris said.
While that was the first time she made that position on marijuana part of her current presidential campaign, the vice president emphasized that it’s “not a new position” for her.
“I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it,” she told Barnes and Jackson. “So that’s where I am on that.”
Last month, meanwhile, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim 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.
“I think it’s an issue for the states on some of those, and that’s the way the states have done it,” Walz, who is Minnesota’s governor and previously served in Congress, said, dodging a reporter’s direct question about national cannabis legalization.
During that interview, Walz highlighted two incremental reform issues: medical marijuana access for veterans who receive healthcare through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as well as passage of federal legislation that would ease restrictions for banks that due business with marijuana companies.
If Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, he said, those matters might be easier to address.
“There’s work to be done nationally around the banking issue,” he said in the Spectrum News interview that was posted on September 14, “and I think that’s something that if we get a working Congress who actually wants to solve some issues—when we have the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate—then we can start to see if some of those things make sense.”
Harris, for her part, has spoken in favor of federal legalization in the past, for example at a closed-door roundtable event with cannabis pardon recipients in March. In her previous run for president, Harris also backed full federal decriminalization for simple drug possession.
Meanwhile former President Donald Trump said recently during his campaign for a second term that he now supports federal marijuana rescheduling and marijuana banking access.
“As President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens,” Trump posted to social media earlier this month.
Trump also recently discussed the medical benefits of cannabis and said legalization would be “very good” for Florida, which will consider the reform at the ballot box in November’s election.
The Harris–Walz campaign, however, has 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.”
In a memo from a senior campaign spokesperson, the Harris–Walz campaign accused Trump of “brazen flip flops” on cannabis, saying it’s one of the Republican former president’s “several bewildering ‘policy proposals’ that deserve real scrutiny.”
The posturing by the presidential candidates comes amid an ongoing process of moving marijuana to the less-restrictive Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
The Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS) this spring recommended moving the drug to Schedule III, but the action has faced resistance from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which has scheduled a hearing on the proposal for December 2—after the presidential election, raising concerns that the process will not be completed until after a new president is inaugurated.
Meanwhile, Trump also recently went after Harris over her prosecutorial record on marijuana, claiming that she put “thousands and thousands of Black people in jail” for cannabis offenses—but the full record of her time in office is more nuanced.
Trump’s line of attack, while misleading, was nonetheless notable in the sense that the GOP presidential nominee implied that he disagrees with criminalizing people over marijuana and is moving to leverage the idea that Harris played a role in racially disproportionate mass incarceration.
As president, Trump largely stayed true to his position that marijuana laws should be handled at the state-level, with no major crackdown on cannabis programs as some feared after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama era federal enforcement guidance. In fact, Trump criticized the top DOJ official and suggested the move should be reversed.
While he was largely silent on the issue of legalization, he did tentatively endorse a bipartisan bill to codify federal policy respecting states’ rights to legalize.
That said, on several occasions he released signing statements on spending legislation stipulating that he reserved the right to ignore a long-standing rider that prohibits the Justice Department from using its funds to interfere with state-legal medical marijuana programs.
Before President Joe Biden (D) bowed out of the race, his campaign made much of the president’s mass cannabis pardons and rescheduling push, drawing a contrast with the Trump administration’s record. The Harris campaign so far has not spoken to that particular issue, and the nominee has yet to publicly discuss marijuana policy issues since her own campaign launched.
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.