Sen. Kamala Harris’s Jamaican father has vigorously disavowed his daughter’s comments regarding marijuana, accusing her of fraudulently stereotyping Jamaicans and pursuing “identity politics.”
The senator said in a radio interview last week that she supports marijuana legalization and has smoked weed herself, citing her ethnicity to buttress her boast: “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?”
Harris’s father isn’t laughing.
In a statement to Jamaica Global Online, Donald Harris said his immediate family wanted to “dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
“My dear departed grandmother … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he said.
“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” wrote Mr. Harris, an economics professor at Stanford University.
Jamaica Global also took issue with the the senator’s remarks, writing: “For some, it is more than mere unease; one Jamaican commenting on social media expressed the concern that ‘soon my job will be singling me out to drug test me since I am from Jamaica. What a stereotype.’ Her concern is not unfounded given the experience of Jamaicans travelling to US ports having sniffer dogs around them in customs halls.”
During her Feb. 11 appearance on The Breakfast Club — a nationally syndicated morning radio program based in New York City — the 2020 presidential hopeful also made sure to note that she not only smoked pot but — by gosh — she inhaled.
While other Democratic contenders would be hard pressed to match Harris’s enthusiasm for the legalization of marijuana, her history as the attorney general tells a different story.
Harris opposed Proposition 19 in 2010, which would have legalized recreational marijuana. “Spending two decades in court rooms, Harris believes that drug selling harms communities,” her campaign manager told local reporters at the time. “Harris supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that.”
But her opposition to marijuana didn’t just inform her campaign policies. As California’s attorney general, she also allowed the federal government to crack down on legal medicinal dispensaries. She refused to join other states’ efforts to remove marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of most dangerous substances, leading the marijuana lobby to back a pro-pot Republican candidate during her re-election.
Harris “also increased convictions of drug dealers from 56 percent to 74 percent” while she was a district attorney, and “tightened loopholes in bail and drug programs,” according to the Washington Examiner.
It certainly would be the height of hypocrisy and arrogance if she was getting high on pot in California while her policies were resulting in more prison time for drug offenders.
“Until last year, she scoffed at the idea of legalizing marijuana,” Fox Business host Kennedy quipped, after the story broke last week.
“Once her opponents dig into her past just a little, her candidacy will go down in flames,” she predicted.
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