Washington (CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris will convene a roundtable on Friday to debate hashish reform with musician Fats Joe and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a White Home official instructed CNN, because the administration conducts its overview on how marijuana is classed below federal regulation.

The group attending the roundtable will embody individuals who have obtained pardons for marijuana-related convictions, the official mentioned.

The roundtable comes as Harris travels the nation to awaken the Democratic base concerning the prospect of voting for her and President Joe Biden a second time. Polling has proven that legalization has had bipartisan assist in recent times – although that assist has been gradual to translate into legislative motion.

In 2022, Biden pardoned all prior federal offenses for easy marijuana possession and inspired all governors to pardon state offenses. The identical yr, Biden requested US Well being and Human Companies Secretary Xavier Becerra and the lawyer basic to start the executive strategy of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled below federal regulation.

It’s at present listed as a Schedule I managed substance – in the identical class as heroin.

Biden additionally talked about hashish reform in his State of the Union tackle final week.

“Nobody needs to be jailed for merely utilizing or have it on their file,” Biden mentioned in his tackle final week.

Harris’ personal emotions on marijuana reform have advanced in keeping with her profession.

In a 2019 interview with “The Breakfast Membership,” Harris admitted to utilizing hashish in school: “And I inhaled – I did inhale,” Harris instructed co-host Charlamagne Tha God in a reference to former President Invoice Clinton’s notorious “didn’t inhale” response to an identical query whereas he was campaigning in 1992.

However as San Francisco’s district lawyer from 2004 to 2011, Harris oversaw scores of marijuana convictions and she or he opposed a failed 2010 effort that may have legalized marijuana in California, the Los Angeles Occasions reported.

She referred to as for an finish to the federal authorities’s ban on medical hashish in 2015, stopping wanting full legalization.

In her 2019 guide, Harris wrote that marijuana needs to be legalized.

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