Students voting on Tuesday, Nov. 6 will discover five candidates for U.S. Senator and ten for President on the ballot. You’ve only heard about the Republican and the Democrat, but those other choices are important. The historical role of third parties is to “test drive” new ideas, especially controversial ones, which professional politicians either fear or don’t take seriously.
The Grassroots Party advocates re-legalizing cannabis for all its purposes—medical use, personal enjoyment, agricultural prosperity, and industrial processing for food, fuel, textiles, paper, and so forth This year, the Grassroots Party collected 6,000 signatures on petitions, securing a spot for Jim Carlson and George McMahon as the Presidential ticket and Tim Davis as the U.S. Senate candidate. They aren’t politicians, but they seek your vote as a protest against a political witch hunt: the “war on drugs.”
In a free society, government has no business dictating what citizens may eat, drink, or smoke, any more than dictating what to think, or what religious faith to practice.
Of all drugs, the worst is alcohol. National alcohol prohibition was tried and then repealed 80 years ago. Prohibition failed to stop drinking and instead led to crime, corruption, infringement of liberty, and disrespect for all law. And when alcohol was legally sold once more, the government earned tax revenue from it and crime rates dropped.
Marijuana prohibition was launched 75 years ago in an orchestrated outburst of racially-prejudiced “reefer madness” publicity. It’s had the same bad effects as alcohol prohibition and likewise has failed to stop the behavior it outlaws.
Re-legalizing cannabis means we could grow jobs right here in Minnesota, and stop subsidizing by default the murderous Mexican criminal cartels. We could lift the police-state paranoia attached to cannabis use, balance the budget, empty the prisons, and provide useful medicine to patients suffering from cancer, m.s., epilepsy, glaucoma, and other afflictions.
Politicians resist legalization because they fear the police unions, the pharmaceutical companies, and the liquor lobby. President Obama, who smoked pot himself thirty years ago, just laughs when asked why we don’t legalize. It’s not funny. In Minnesota last year, there were 12,043 marijuana-related arrests.
Senator Amy Klobuchar even supports the DEA’s policy of criminalizing patients and doctors for using cannabis in medical therapy.
Grassroots nominee Jim Carlson is a Duluth businessman targeted by the power structure for selling something other than alcohol, the civic-approved poison, to the public. Carlson points out that legal cannabis would drive synthetic stuff out of the market—and maybe reduce drunkenness significantly too.
George McMahon is a severely-ill patient who actually receives marijuana directly from the federal government—one of four in the nation still benefiting from a program shut off in 1992 for political reasons. Tim Davis is a retired blue-collar worker and longtime cannabis reform spokesman.
Minnesota’s legislature won’t let the people vote directly to reform marijuana laws, as in California or Colorado, so the only way—and the best way--to use the election to support this cause is to vote for minor party candidates who speak out for it. Legal cannabis would create jobs, restore freedom, reduce crime, and alleviate suffering, so “Let’s Get Growing!"
BY Oliver Steinberg vonlogau@gmail.com
Vector in image created by VectorPortal, found here.