‘It gives a lot of people joy’: Kamala Harris and the evolution of marijuana and politics

President Bill Clinton admitted to smoking marijuana but famously said he never inhaled. President George W. Bush is believed to have partaken in illicit drugs in his youth, though he always played coy about it. President Barack Obama wrote candidly about his past marijuana and cocaine use but was never a strong supporter of pot reforms at the federal level.

Now, less than 30 years after Clinton felt the need to qualify his drug use, presidential candidate Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) is not only unabashedly owning up to her own personal marijuana use but also is in full support of making it legal nationwide.

“Half my family is from Jamaica; are you kidding me?” Harris said, laughing, during a radio interview Monday. “And I did inhale.”

Harris’s unflinching support for legalization shows the dramatic evolution in the ease in which politicians talk about pot now. Whereas once policymakers decried marijuana as a gateway drug, Harris defended its use by saying, “It gives a lot of people joy.”

“And we need more joy in the world,” she said. [Read more at The Washington Post]