I do not want to get into the merits of medical marijuana legalization: there are people of good will and good heart on both sides of the issue, and there is no easy solution (if there was, we’d have implemented it). But, no matter what our opinions are on the legalization of pot, surely we can all agree that an elected official should not be telling the desperate mothers of cancer patients that they should enlist the services of a pusher?
Parents in support of legalizing medical marijuana say Gov. Mark Dayton urged them to buy pot illegally on Minnesota streets to help their severely sick children.
At an extremely emotional press conference Wednesday, the parents called Dayton’s suggestion offensive. Struggling to hold back tears, the parents accused the governor of using them as political cover, so that he might to look good while opposing the medical marijuana bill they sought.
CBS says ‘accused,’ I say ‘accurately tagged.’ More via Ed Morrissey, who notes that Mark Dayton could almost certainly get a medical pot bill safely through the state legislature, if he wanted to. Only, Mark Dayton clearly doesn’t want to. He also doesn’t want to fight a PR war with mothers of cancer patients, which is probably why “the governor suggested they can buy pot illegally on the street, or in another state, to treat their children.” For some bizarre reason, Dayton thought that encouraging a woman to risk getting arrested on interstate drug trafficking charges would be less of a public-relations disaster (or hit to his re-election chances)…
Moe Lane
How is it that the Minn GOP is so weak that idiots like Dayton and Franken are probably going to get re-elected?
It doesn’t help that the same-day voting laws in the so-called “Brainpower State” encourage massive vote fraud, or that there’s been an ongoing three-way fight in the RPM between the Ron Paul crowd, Establishment Republicans, and the Religious Right. Add in the fact that the state Campaign Finance Board is stacked with diehard DFL appointees and the current Secretary of State is widely suspected of colluding in vote fraud re: Al Franken’s election, and you have a pretty high hurdle to clear. Mitch Berg’s “Shot In The Dark” blog is a pretty good place to go if you’re curious about Minnesota politics; it was pretty much my go-to site when I was living up there in the Ninth Circle of Hell.