There are plenty of issues that will be debated by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump such as taxes, racial profiling, immigration, charter schools, costs of college, gun control, and climate change. But maybe you’re a stoner and don’t care about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the only issue that you truly concerned about is the legalization of marijuana. So let’s see how the two presidential candidates line up on the legalization of weed.
Donald Trump said that medical marijuana is something “we should really consider strongly,” but in the end, he believes that the legalization of weed should be left up to the states.
In 1990, Trump told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the U.S. drug war is “a joke.” He said that drugs should be legalized to “take the profit away from these drug czars.”
In June, Trump said, “Medical marijuana is another thing, but I think [recreational marijuana] it’s bad. And I feel strongly about that.” He questioned the effectiveness of marijuana legalization in Colorado. “If they vote for it, they vote for it. But they’ve got a lot of problems going on right now, in Colorado. Some big problems. But I think medical marijuana, 100 percent.”
Trump has claimed to have never tried controlled substances “of any kind,” partly because his brother Freddy died at the age of 43 because of alcoholism.
Hillary Clinton has said that she plans to remove cannabis from its Schedule I drug to a Schedule II drug if she is elected. The former secretary of state also said she would increase research, as well as to stop imprisoning marijuana users.
“I think we need to be very clear about the benefits of marijuana use for medicinal purposes,” she told CNN. “I don’t think we’ve done enough research yet, although I think for people who are in extreme medical conditions and who have anecdotal evidence that it works, there should be availability under appropriate circumstances.”
“I have no doubt there are very real benefits for people,” Clinton said of weed in a town hall in February.
Maya Harris, Clinton’s policy adviser, said Hillary wants to allow the states to make their own decision on marijuana legalization. “On recreational, you know, states are the laboratories of democracy,” Harris said. “We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is.”
Hillary was opposed to the legalization of marijuana in her first presidential run in 2008.
In 2011, Clinton said that legalizing drugs would be a bad idea. “It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don’t think that—you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped.”
Clinton told CNN that she has “absolutely not” tried marijuana. “I didn’t do it when I was young. I’m not going to start now.”
More recently, Hillary’s daughter had this hot take on medicinal marijuana. Chelsea Clinton stumped for her mother at a rally at Youngstown State University on Saturday. While discussing some public health concerns associated with cannabis, Chelsea said there is “anecdotal evidence” that people have died from marijuana use in Colorado.
Chelsea Clinton implies here that marijuana can kill you. Uhh pic.twitter.com/cdBWGgDG5P
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 27, 2016
Chelsea said the following:
“Anecdotally we have lots of evidence in…epilepsy but also in autism, in stimulating appetite for people who are on intensive chemotherapy regimens, for people who have non-epilepsy seizure disorders and challenges. But we also have anecdotal evidence now from Colorado where some of the people who were taking marijuana for those purposes, the coroner believes, after they died, there was drug interactions with other things they were taking.”
Did she just say people are dying from smoking weed?
Anecdotal evidence?
Let me remind Chelsea the definition of the word “anecdotal” – “Not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.”
Let’s look at the documented evidence of deaths caused directly from marijuana.
Looking.
Looking.
Still looking.
There’s gotta be many deaths from weed since people die from such inane objects such as 37 deaths from vending machines from 1978 to 1995.
I FOUND AN ARTICLE ABOUT DEATHS FROM MARIJUANA!!!
The Huffington Post article states: “Yeah, not a single person has ever died from a weed overdose.”
Oh.
Zero. Zip. Nada.
There are only 40 days until the 2016 presidential election.