Presidential
Hopefuls on Pot
By Ellen Komp,
June 1, 2007
According
to a blogger named Syrinx, in the early morning hours of May 25,
C-SPAN televised an interaction between John Edwards, campaigning in New Hampshire,
and "a young, well-groomed fellow, an advocate for medical marijuana,
[who] asked Edwards about the issue. Edwards seemed a little evasive and even
passive-aggressive toward the young man."
So
far, it looks like another campaign wherein the only advocates for marijuana
legalization will be third-party candidates, even though several of the top
contenders have smoked pot.
According
to Edward Klein's new book The Truth About Hillary, she smoked pot
while a student at Wellesley with her boyfriend David Rupert, and met Bill
Clinton at a commune called Cozy Beach that was affiliated with Ken Kesey's
Hog Farm. "During their remaining time at Yale, Bill and Hillary often
grooved the night away at Cozy Beach, spinning the latest Jefferson Airplane
platters and eating Kris Olson's hashish brownies," Klein wrote. During
President Bill Clinton's last week in office, he told Rolling Stone magazine
he thought marijuana ought to be legalized. But in a Senate debate in Manhattan
on Oct 8, 2000, Hillary took the middle road, advocating Drug Courts and weekly
drug testing for those with an "addiction."
John McCain recently said, "[Barak] Obama wouldn't know the
difference between an RPG and a bong." Obama admitted to trying cocaine and pot in high school in
a memoir written 11 years ago, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and
Inheritance. Apparently he tried it more than once when he wrote, "I
had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer
in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother
you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids
who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for
an excuse to brawl....if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting
you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and
see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism." In an
interview during his Senate race two years ago, Obama said he admitted using
drugs because he thought it was important for "young people who are already
in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can
make mistakes and still recover."
John
Edwards and DNC Chairman Howard Dean joined John Kerry by answering "Yes"
to the question "Which of you are ready to admit to having used marijuana
in the past?" at the "Rock the Vote" debate in 2003. Though
Dennis Kucinich answered "No" he added, "But I think it ought
to be decriminalized." The incident lead to the hilarious Capitol Steps
song, "Green
Green Grass At Home"
Edwards
is on record favoring coming down hard on drug
"dealers," but also advocates "treating" users
instead of incarcerating them. While governor of Vermont, Dean he blocked
a medical marijuana bill; in contrast, dark horse Bill Richardson of New Mexico
just signed a medical marijuana bill into law.
According
to OnTheIssues.org, Mitt Romney has no stance whatsoever on drugs and McCain
is particularly hawkish on them. Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani is certainly
no friend to marijuana. In 1992, when Guiliani took office, New York police
arrested 720 pot smokers. But the year he left office, 59,945 people, including
19 at a memorial for John Lennon and eight members of an East Village medical
marijuana co-op, were arrested in the Big Apple, many of them in public parks.
Read
more
Current
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is considering buying his way into the race,
was asked during his mayorial campaign if he'd smoked pot. "You bet I
did, and I enjoyed it" was the response, leading to an ad campaign by
NORML. Bloomberg may still be smoking: he recently put forth a five-year plan
to convert New York's 13,000 yellow cabs to hybrid vehicles.
Should Newt Gingrich decide to run, he may have to answer for the fact that he co-introduced legislation to allow marijuana's use as a medicine at the Federal level on September 16, 1981. On March 19, 1982 he wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source. . . . Federal policies do not reflect a factual or balanced assessment of marijuana's use as a medicant."
Gingrich has admitted that he smoked marijuana when he was in college. He stated in 1995 article from The Economist, "That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era." One year later he attacked Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry for making the same admission, and charged without substantiation that one quarter of the White House staff used drugs. "See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality," Gingrich said. "That's why you get to go to jail and I don't. Any questions?" Yes, many.
In
an era where Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman who brought forward
the so-called "Barr amendment" blocking the District of Columbia's
voter-approved medical marijuana law, is now a lobbyist for the pro-pot Marijuana
Policy Project, anything can happen.
Copyright
2007
VERY
IMPORTANT POTHEADS
Debunking
Myths About Marijuana