Kamala Harris Address Cannabis, and Joe Rogan, in Her Book "107 Days"

Kamala Harris's new book "107 Days" about her presidential campaign says of her time as District Attorney of San Francisco:

"I was one of the first elected progressive district attorneys, looking for ways to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail rather than put them in it. I didn’t seek jail time for simple marijuana offenses. My Back on Track initiative, connecting offenders with services and jobs, and also taking care of their mental health by doing things like hooking them up with counseling and gym memberships, worked so well it became a model for other jurisdictions. It is true that prosecution rates for violent crime increased on my watch. If you rape a woman, molest a child, or take a life, consequences should be serious and swift. I don’t apologize for that."

Cannabis comes up only one other time in her book, discussing negotiations to be interviewed by Joe Rogan on his podcast. "I wanted to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast on October 25. He chose Trump instead," she recounts.

"I wasn’t in the weeds on any of it. I left that up to my staff," Harris writes. "They’d suggested topics that might interest Rogan’s audience, such as cannabis, social media censorship, and crypto. Rogan’s team said they just wanted to discuss the economy, immigration, and abortion. Again, I was fine with that."

She continued, "Even though most of my team thought doing the interview at all was a gamble, and others bluntly argued it was a bad idea, I really wanted to do it. One podcast was not going to win or lose the election. But Rogan’s audience was young and male. I wanted to reach those guys who might not otherwise hear from me."

According to the book, Rogan insisted the interview happen in Austin, Texas, and Harris's team suggested an interview on October 25, the day of a rally for reproductive rights she was speaking at in Houston. Told that date was a personal day for Rogan, another date and time could not be agreed upon. Instead, on October 22, "we learned that Rogan was spending his 'personal day' interviewing Donald Trump." 

"On the eve of the election, Rogan endorsed Trump," Harris recalls. "Since then, he has lied on his show, claiming we pushed for tight topic restrictions. He even claimed that the very topics we had suggested [like cannabis] were ones we’d refused to discuss."

As reported by Marijuana Moment, on the episode of Rogan's podcast where he addressed the Harris interview controversy, comedian Adrienne Iapalucci asked Rogan why the then-vice president wasn't on the podcast and wouldn’t want to talk about marijuana....The campaign’s contention, Rogan said, was “because of her prosecuting record” in California. “She put a lot of people in jail for weed—1,500 apparently,” Rogan said of her time as SF DA. 

Marijuana Moment reached out to Rogan’s team for comment, but a representative was not immediately available. The article points out that Trump clobbered Harris on her marijuana prosecutorial record with his usual hyperbolic "facts" during the campaign, and hasn't lived up to his campaign promises to be better.  

As a California senator, Harris sponsored the MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act) to legalize cannabis at the federal level. During her 2019 Presidential campaign, she said on The Breakfast Club radio talk show she was “absolutely in favor of legalizing marijuana,” harkening to her half-Jamaican heritage and citing the mass incarceration resulting from cannabis prohibition, particularly of young black men. And she admitted she smoked weed when she was in college. When asked if she might start smoking again, she replied, “I think it gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy in the world.” Read more.

Just before the 2024 election, Harris reaffirmed her vow to federally legalize marijuana if elected and ensure that there are opportunities for “all Americans to succeed in this new industry.”