Father slams Kamala Harris over pot-smoking joke

Washington, February 21 

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, has been slammed by her father for saying that she smoked marijuana in her younger years and supports it becoming legalized.

Donald Harris, an economics professor at Stanford University, claimed his daughter was playing "identity politics" and added that she was harming her family's Jamaican ancestors, Politico reported on Wednesday.

"My dear departed grandmothers… as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family's name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics," he said in a statement to Kingston-based Jamaica Global Online.

"Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty." Donald Harris' daughter, a first-term senator from California who launched her 2020 campaign last month, appeared on New York-based radio show "The Breakfast Club" earlier last week and was asked if she opposed the legalization of pot.

"That's not true," she told the show's co-host. 

"And look, I joke about it—half joking—half my family is from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?" Harris, whose mother is an Indian, said she smoked a joint in college. "I have... And I inhaled," she added, a joking reference to former President Bill Clinton's comment on the campaign trail in 1992 that he smoked marijuana but "didn't inhale".

Kamala Harris' campaign made no comment on her father's reaction. — IANS