MJ moment

“One thing is certain: sharing your ballot with cannabis will embarrass you. In the red states, in the blue states and in the battleground states, pot is more popular than the pols.” By Don Murphy, Marijuana Policy Project I should be fired. For the past four years, I have tried to convince my party and my president to embrace marijuana policy reform. It should have been easy. After all, it is consistent with our core beliefs of freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility and federalism. But I failed. I know from personal experience as a former legislator who was the original lead sponsor of my state’s first medical marijuana law that drug policy advocacy by a Republican is not the third rail everyone reflexively assumes it to be. Either because of, or in spite of, my advocacy over the past 20 years, I was also elected by Maryland’s most partisan Republicans to be a party chair and four-time RNC convention delegate, once as delegation chair and twice for Trump. As a candidate, Trump said he was in favor of medical marijuana… “100 percent.” He also said he knew sick people who use marijuana for medical purposes and that, “it really does help them.” I knew then that he was sympathetic to patients and to our cause. And he thought legalizing marijuana should be left up to the states. I was dealt a pretty good hand. During the 2016 election, four blue states passed adult-use marijuana ballot initiatives. One in Arizona failed by two points. Arkansas, Montana and North Dakota passed medical marijuana with 53 percent, 58 percent and 64 percent respectively. In Florida, medical marijuana received 71 percent of the vote, besting Trump by 1.9 million votes (6,519,000 for Measure 2 and 4,618,000 for Trump). In battleground Florida, pot was more…

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Source : Did Trump’s Failure To Embrace Marijuana Legalization Cost Him Votes? (Op-Ed)

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