Kamala Harris Packed California Prisons With Pot Peddlers

At least 1,560 people were sent to state prisons for marijuana-related
offenses between 2011 and 2016

Charles Fain Lehman and Brent Scher - February 14, 2019 5:00 AM

Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) admitted in an interview this week to
using marijuana, an act that landed thousands in prison while she was
California's Attorney General and opposed legalization of the drug.

The drug use admission to the "Breakfast Club" came as part of Harris'
attempt to erase the reputation she earned as a California prosecutor.

She is now calling for legalizing marijuana as a first step to end
the War on Drugs, but opposed marijuana legalization during both her
2010 campaign for Attorney General and 2014 re-election campaign, when
she notably lost support from the marijuana industry after she laughed
at her Republican opponent for supporting legalization.

Under Harris's six-year tenure, hundreds were sent to state prisons
for marijuana-related offenses, crime records show.

Possession of small quantities of marijuana (up to an ounce) for
personal use has been decriminalized in California since 1975.
However, sales of the drug remained illegal until 2018, when the
commercial licensing portion of Proposition 64—the ballot measure that
legalized weed state-wide—was implemented. That means that the state
still arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned people for
marijuana-related offenses.

The California Attorney General's office does not provide organized,
publicly available data on annual prosecutions. When contacted by the
Free Beacon, it could only point to its OpenJustice data portal, which
reports only limited data sets. However, the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation does provide data on the total number
of admissions to state prisons annually, in its "Offender Data Points"
series and the now-discontinued "Characteristics of New Admissions"
series.

These reports provide information on new admissions (as opposed to
parole violators) to the California state prison system, including by
offense type. Based on these reports, at least 1,560 people were sent
to state prisons for marijuana-related offenses between 2011 and 2016.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/kama...-peddling-pot/