Politics
Marijuana On The Ballot: Where Candidates For U.S. Senate And State Governor’s Races Stand On Legalization
A leading marijuana reform group has unveiled its voter guides for next month’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, offering overviews of the candidates’ cannabis policy records and assigning them a grade accordingly.
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) said that, ahead of the November election, the guides can help voters identify which candidates are most likely to advance a reform agenda and who might represent a threat to those efforts.
“With Election Day quickly approaching, voters across the country will soon have an opportunity to cast ballots that will shape prospects for cannabis policy reform for years to come,” Karen O’Keefe, MPP’s director of state policies, said in a press release on Tuesday. “Our goal is to educate voters on where candidates stand on cannabis policy reform so that they can cast informed votes.”
Voters in 11 states will be electing governors next month, and there are 34 Senate seats on the ballot. And while marijuana legalization enjoys sizable bipartisan support among the public, the guides reveal significant divides on the issue within many of those races.
For example, in Florida, incumbent Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) earned an F grade for consistently opposing even modest medical cannabis legislation in the Senate, moving to ban smokeable medical marijuana while serving as governor and planning to vote against a statewide adult-use cannabis legalization initiative at the ballot next month.
In contrast, MPP gave his opponent, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL), an A grade. She supports the Florida legalization measure, voted in favor of a congressional bill to end federal marijuana prohibition and said she also backs proposals to provide cannabis industry access to the banking system, for example.
In response to an MPP survey that supplemented the guides, she said: “Here in Florida, Black farmers have been shut out of farming industries such as medical marijuana and have faced higher application fees for farming licenses. That’s unacceptable.”
“In addition to supporting Florida’s Amendment 3 to legalize recreational marijuana for adults, I’ll use my platform to ensure that Black farmers in our state have equal access to grants to grow marijuana in our state,” she said.
Additionally, with 34 Senate seats on the ballot this year, November’s election is key to the prospects for federal reform. Check out our U.S. Senate voter guide to see where candidates stand on cannabis policy reform. https://t.co/OokPTU0GJ7
— Marijuana Policy Project (@MarijuanaPolicy) October 8, 2024
Not every race shows such a wide schism, however.
In Maine, for instance, incumbent Sen. Angus King (I) and his GOP challenger, former state Sen. Eric Brakey (R), both have A- grades. King supports federal legalization, cannabis banking reform and rescheduling, while Brakey backed Maine’s 2016 adult-use legalization ballot measure and sponsored other proposals such as allowing medical marijuana access in hospitals. The Democratic candidate, David Costello, has an incomplete record.
For marijuana advocates, the outcome of the Senate races is of particular interest, as cannabis reform has consistently stalled out in the chamber—due in large part to the need for 60 votes to overcome a potential filibuster threat. Marijuana banking legislation moved through a Senate committee last year, but it’s yet to reach the floor amid concerns that it doesn’t currently have the votes to advance.
With respect to the gubernatorial races, meanwhile, similar themes played out in the MPP guide.
In New Hampshire, the A-graded Democratic candidate, former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig (D), has voiced support for legalization, expungements and limited home grow options for adults. The GOP candidate, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), opposes legalization and recently attacked Craig for suggesting tax revenue from legal cannabis sales could fund housing and schools.
North Carolina’s gubernatorial race could also prove key to the prospects of reform getting enact in the coming session. The state legislature has struggled to advance even a conservative, GOP-led medical cannabis legalization bill over recent years.
On the Democratic side, the candidate, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (D), has gotten behind decriminalization and medical marijuana legalization. And he feels the measure that’s so far stalled in the legislature is too restrictive, earning him an A grade. The GOP candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R), has said he’s “conflicted” about medical marijuana but open to a discussion. MPP assigned him a D grade.
Meanwhile, marijuana policy issues have also been raised at the presidential level. In a historic first, both major party candidates—Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump—are in favor of ending criminalization.
Late last month was the first time since becoming the party’s presidential nominee that Harris reiterated her support for marijuana legalization, after sponsoring a bill to end prohibition during her time in the Senate and privately backing the reform during a roundtable event with marijuana pardon recipients in March.
“I just feel strongly, people should not be going to jail for smoking weed,” she said in an interview with the All the Smoke podcast. “And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail.”
“Second, 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 told hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, who are former NBA players and one of whom later admitted that he smoked cannabis before the interview.
“Actually this is not a new position for me,” she said. “I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it. So that’s where I am on that.”
Meanwhile, last month 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.
Trump, for his part, 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 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 Democracy Chronicles.
