Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), is accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of failing to stop marijuana and fentanyl disguised as Nerds candy and other popular brands that appeal to children from coming across the border.
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At a Faith & Freedom Coalition event in Atlanta last month, the senator talked about being invited to the evidence room of a sheriffs department where he says he saw “every drug you can possibly imagine,” including “bags and bags of marijuana,” pressed fentanyl pills and meth.
“I say, ‘Guys, what is going on here? You’ve got all these drugs here that looks to me just like a box of candy—a box of Nerds candy,” Vance said. “And they say, ‘Well, sir, that’s actually THC and fentanyl.’ But I say, ‘Wait a second, the cartels have disguised deadly fentanyl to look like child’s candy so that they can make it easier to get into our country?'”
“Yet we know that one of those packets of fentanyl is going to end up in one of our neighborhood streets,” he said. “One of those packets of fentanyl is going to end up in a child’s playground. One of those packets of what looks like Nerds candy, but is actually a deadly substance, is going to end up in our schools, and a kid’s going to open up a packet of candy, take a piece of candy out and lose their life because of it.”
“Now that is a sick and deranged human being that would do anything like that. But it’s a sick and deranged human being who would give that person power over the United States of America, and that’s exactly what Kamala Harris has done,” he said. “She has given these drug cartels free reign over our country, and now they’re smuggling in deadly drugs that look like child candy.”
While Vance has expressed support for a states’ rights approach to cannabis policy and indicated he’s opposed to criminalizing people over marijuana possession, he’s more recently leaned into anti-drug rhetoric, including during am earlier campaign event with the Milwaukee Police Association in Wisconsin in August.
At the time, he similarly claimed “marijuana bags” are being laced with fentanyl, and he said the Biden administration’s border policies were also making it so that youth, including his own kids, can’t experiment with cannabis or other drugs without risking fatal overdoses.
Advocates would argue that’s a key reason to enact a regulatory framework for marijuana or other drugs that includes testing requirements and other safeguards to mitigate the risk of dangerous contaminants, but the GOP candidate did not draw that connection and continues to maintain an opposition to cannabis legalization.
Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022, doesn’t have an extensive cannabis policy record. However, he’s voted against bipartisan banking legislation that passed in committee and has argued that states that have enacted legalization should increase enforcement activities, complained about the smell of cannabis multiple times and suggested that its use can lead to violence.
A 271-page leaked memo with vetting material on Vance included his cannabis legalization opposition under a list of “notable vulnerabilities” with moderate voters, alongside his past comments on slashing Social Security and Medicare, opposition to student loan forgiveness, support for abortion restrictions and his views on race relations, among others.
Trump, for his part, evidently doesn’t see a major liability in embracing certain cannabis reform policies, as he’s recently backed federal marijuana rescheduling and allowing industry access to banking services, as well as a Florida legalization ballot initiative he’ll get to vote as a resident this November.
“As President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens,” he said last month.
“As I have previously stated, I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use,” he said in a post on his Truth Social site. “We must also implement smart regulations, while providing access for adults, to safe, tested product. As a Floridian, I will be voting YES on Amendment 3 this November.”
Trump’s marijuana post followed up on one he made in August in which he indicated—but did not explicitly say—he supported Amendment 3 in Florida. The earlier comments predicted that Florida voters would approve the cannabis measure and generally discussed the benefits of legalization, but left some observers wanting more clarity on the former president’s position on the specific state initiative.
Trump also discussed the medical benefits of cannabis and said legalization would be “very good” for Florida in an interview with Lex Fridman last month.
At a press conference in August, Trump told a reporter that he’s starting to “agree a lot more” that people should not be criminalized over marijuana given that it’s “being legalized all over the country”—adding that he would “fairly soon” reveal his position on the Florida ballot measure.
Harris, for her part, recently made her first comments backing federal legalization since accepting the party’s 2024 nomination, weighing in on the reform in a podcast interview that was released last month. This follows weeks of protracted silence on the issue, despite her prior advocacy for legalization and sponsorship of a Senate bill to end federal prohibition.
“This is not a new position for me,” Harris said. “I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it. So that’s where I am on that.”
Meanwhile, last month Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Harris’s running mate, said he thinks marijuana legalization is an issue that should be left to individual states, adding that electing more Democrats to Congress could also make it easier to pass federal reforms like cannabis banking protections.
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