Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Hillary Clinton and Marijuana
Doug Berman at MLP&R links to a Vox article entitled "Democratic voters love marijuana legalization. Hillary Clinton doesn't."
The piece quotes Marijuana Policy Project's Dan Riffle:
Clinton's stance to let states decide whether to legalize is "unnecessarily tepid for a Democrat [said Riffle]. There's nothing to lose and a lot to gain for her if she were to take a more aggressive position in favor of regulation. By not doing so, she leaves the door open for a candidate like [former Maryland Gov. Martin] O'Malley, who is trying to outflank her with liberals and young voters, to make marijuana reform part of his platform."
I'm not a Democrat, but from an outsider's position I can't see any benefit for her to do anything controversial at this point. Unless she's very, very afraid that marijuana will be the key issue for millennial, minority, and women voters in the primary -- and I don't see that being the case here -- why risk alienating older white voters, at least some of whom she'll need to win in the general election?
Now, if the marijuana lobby were to cough up $100 million or so in contributions, there might be a good reason to do it. But that seems unlikely.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/cannabis_law/2015/04/hillary-clinton-and-marijuana.html
