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god i wish we would do the same across europe
So far it's just a campaign promise. I wouldn't envy us yet. She made a career out of putting people in jail for MJ.
I haven’t heard that, do you have a source? My understanding is that she particularly went after violent crimes while showing leniency and seeking alternatives to incarceration towards non-violent offenses during her time as a prosecutor.
I went looking for one, and it seems not as cut and dried as I thought.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kamala-harris-record-marijuana-prosecutor-173249390.html
This article spins it slightly differently, IMO, but still not solidly stating what I believed to be true. Bold added by me.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/five-takeaways-from-kamala-harris-s-all-the-smoke-podcast-interview/ar-AA1rumR4
That aside, it remains true that at this point it's nothing but a campaign promise.
While I don't agree with the criminalization of marijuana, it's really rough when it comes to a prosecutor and a law they may not like. Step back and ask the question, "should an Attorney General (AG) be allowed to not prosecute laws they don't agree with?" You might be willing to say, "yes" for laws you also don't agree with; but, what happens when it starts to cover laws you want to see enforced? Should "prosecutorial discretion" effectively allow an AG a complete veto power over the laws as passed by the State and Federal legislatures?
As much as it may suck for the person in that position, it would be really bad for democracy to allow that sort of power. We empower an AG to enforce the law as written. But, we also expect that they will enforce the law as written. So ya, I would expect that Harris (or her office), as AG, prosecuted marijuana cases. That's really what the whole "rule of law" thing means. It means the laws, as written, being enforced on all people. And it's up to us, the people, through our representatives to get that law changed.
And hopefully, this will work out to be more than an empty campaign promise. Though, I don't plan to hold my breath.
AGs choose which laws to enforce or not. That's generally their job. They choose how to distribute resources available by selecting which cases to pursue.
It's common for them to not pursue cases. It's more common for them to pass up on pursuing a case against someone with wealth. In that case it's more likely they'll waste resources on someone who can lawyer up, draw the process out, and often get the case thrown out.
Possession cases are easy and seen as being hard on crime which is politically motivated as it gets you reelected by conservatives and liberals alike.
They have that power and use it frequently to disservice the poors/eccentrics while ignoring the transgressions of the wealthy.