US presidential hopeful Harris says she tried marijuana
United States Senator Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor who is seeking the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, said on Monday she had smoked marijuana in college and supported its legalisation.
The California Democrat told the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club at Power 105.1 in New York that she smoked pot while attending Howard University in Washington in the 1980s.
“And I did inhale,” she said, laughing, in a swipe at former President Bill Clinton, who famously said he had tried marijuana, but had not inhaled.
Harris, 54, is among a diverse and growing group of Democrats seeking to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election.
Fellow Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts launched their bids over the weekend.
A f o rmer San Francisco prosecutor, Harris stopped short of endorsing legalised pot during a tight but ultimately successful race to become California’s attorney general in 2014.
In 2016, during her run for the US Senate, she declined to endorse a ballot initiative that legalised the drug in the most populous US state for recreational use by adults. She said at the time, however, that she expected marijuana to eventually become legal.
Since her election to the Senate, Harris had called for legalising pot and supported a measure to decriminalise it at the federal level. She has for years called for research into the impact of marijuana use on the developing brains of teenagers and young adults, and for standards to judge when drivers are impaired after using cannabis.