The Republican Party's Pot Dilemma

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Christopher Beach was trying to defend keeping marijuana illegal to a roomful of conservatives, and it was not going well.

When Beach insisted the drug war has not been a complete failure, laughter rippled through the crowd.

When he said governments sometimes have to protect people from themselves, there were groans and boos.

One after another, audience members stood to quibble with his statistics and accuse him of bad faith. As the discussion drew to a close with yet another hostile blast in his direction, Beach mumbled into his microphone, "This is just getting more fun."

Beach's panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, titled "Rocky Mountain High: Does Legalized Pot Mean Society's Going Up In Smoke?," was ostensibly a debate. I attended expecting to find conservatives divided on the question, which seems to pit Republican cultural conservatism against the party's ascendant libertarian strain.

But the discussion—which pitted Beach, a producer for the Morning in America radio show hosted by former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, against Mary Katharine Ham, a conservative blogger and Fox News contributor—turned out to be surprisingly one-sided.

"What's your answer—to just keep arresting people, ruining lives?" a middle-aged man named Leo Dymowski asked Beach heatedly. "How are we going to get out of this mess by continuing a completely failed policy?"


more here
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ma/284289/

I'm going to make a bold prediction: it will be legal in all of the United States, either de jure or de facto, by 2030.

The DEA may be downgrading marijuana's status as a Schedule 1 drug.

Can the mods merge this with The All-Inclusive Marijuana Thread (and retain the latter title, because it's mine and one of the few keeper threads I've created)?

No, this is more about the news of it, legal issues, etc.

That other thread is in GD for all of you to discuss recreational use.

Exactly what I was going to say.

Medical pot is now legal in PA, despite Republicans standing before the legislature warning people that there would be an epidemic of overdoses.

Now that Bernie is done, my one wish for this election cycle, as a resident of Connecticut, is that this state or one of the 3 that borders it, legalizes marijuana. C'mon northeast USA, do the right thing.

Sounds like MA has a fair chance this year, though if passed I'm sure they'd fight the implementation tooth and nail.

i was right btw

To be fair, it was a pretty obvious take.

the massachusetts legislature has a long history of not wanting to respect ballot initiatives