Tag: cannabis

Democrats Wimp Out on Federal Marijuana Legalization. Thanks, Joe Biden!

It’s 2020 and the leadership of the Democratic Party still cannot get it together on marijuana legalization, which two-thirds of Americans support.

Pew

According to Pew polling data, support for full legalization crossed the 50 percent threshold back in 2010 and has been growing ever since. Much like support for gay marriage recognition, this seems to be a permanent cultural shift in attitudes.

But unlike the Democratic Party’s embrace of gay marriage, its leadership cannot seem to line up behind marijuana legalization, even as the Black Lives Matter and criminal justice reform movements highlight precisely how the drug war has led to the overpolicing and harassment of black communities.

Marijuana Moment reports that on Monday the Democratic National Committee rejected an amendment to put a plank supporting marijuana legalization into the party’s platform. The final vote against, 50-106, is almost a perfect inversion of the two-thirds of the public who want legalization.

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Disabled Veteran Sentenced to 5 Years for Using Legal Medical Marijuana to Treat War Injury

Due to the archaic cannabis laws in the Land of the Free, a disabled veteran was sentenced to 5 years in prison for possessing medical marijuana that he had a prescription for in one state but got caught with in another state.

Sean Worsley, 33, who is a disabled veteran who has PTSD and a traumatic brain injury from his time in Iraq, will now spend the next five years in a cage for using a plant to heal himself.

While Sean was traveling with his wife Eboni to visit family in Mississippi and North Carolina, they stopped for gas in Alabama when they were in between their destinations. While they were parked at the gas station, a police officer spotted them and decided that the music coming from the Worsley’s car was too loud. He also seemed upset that Sean was playing “air guitar.”

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If weed is legal, why are so many people still being arrested and locked up for it?

While Michigan dispensaries collectively bring in millions of dollars every month, Michael Thompson is serving a de facto life sentence in the same state for the very same reason — selling cannabis. 

As the country grapples with both a global pandemic and nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, cannabis remains at the forefront of the cultural and political conversation. Cannabis was deemed an essential business by nearly all states with a medical or adult-use market during COVID-19, yet its criminalization has resulted in the arrests of millions of Americans, with Black individuals arrested at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts. 

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