What was the position of the Bush campaign regarding medical marijuana before the 2000 election? I seem to remember him saying the states should decide.
Seems like more of a GQ than a debate, but yes, your memory is correct.
From the October 22, 1999 Washington Post:
Of course, we still have federal agents busting down doors of dying AIDS patients and forcing them to waste the precious little time they have left on this Earth rotting away in a jail cell. We have the feds threatening doctors for advising their patients to use a medicine that they think will benefit them. Where did Asa Hutchinson, GWB, and Ashcroft go to medical school, again?
All this for what? A plant that grows naturally on six continents and has history of proven use dating back several thousand years? A plant that, in terms of overall health effects, has been proven time and again to be less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco? A medicine whose side effects fall well within the range of scores of drugs that easily received FDA approval?
From what I’ve read, GWB hasn’t said a word about medical pot since he was elected. He just stands by and lets his cronies do what they do best - waste my tax money (and rapidly erode my faith in our government) by imprisoning dying people.
Thank you N. S. for helping me to confirm this. I remember thinking at the time “well at least he will leave the med mj users alone.” Now the feds are after them harder than Clinton was and Clinton openly said the feds should step in.
Now since G.W. has Ashcroft and Hutchinson do all of the talking, does that mean he is not a backslider.
I started this thread in this forum to get great lines like this…
“Where did Asa Hutchinson, GWB, and Ashcroft go to medical school, again?”
I looked for a cite to confirm Dubyas former position on this but I was only able to find articles mentioning what he said, not where or when he said it.
Please provide a cite showing that this is the norm. Because this just seems like biased rhetoric to me.
Perhaps my paragraph was a little strongly worded, Conflict of Interest. So far, the feds haven’t been explicitly going after Joe AIDS Patient who has three plants growing in his closet. That’s a good thing.
But what about the AIDS and cancer patients who are so sick that they physically can’t grow the pot for themselves. Laws in states where medical marijuana has been approved generally allow for a third party to grow the pot for them. That’s who the feds are going after.
These aren’t commercial growers out to make a profit. Many are sick themselves. Consider the tragic case of Peter McWilliams. He spread the word about medical marijuana, wrote several books (all now available online for free), and grew pot for others who were wasting away. Peter had cancer and AIDS, but the feds went after him in force, anyway. Knowing he couldn’t survive in prison if convicted, and knowing he was barred from even mentioning his medical condition at trial (!), he pled guilty, hoping to serve under house arrest. Of course, this meant being drug tested, so Peter couldn’t smoke. He eventually died because he couldn’t keep down his medication.
Now, as to the threatening of doctors, it looks that wasn’t the Bush administration. Upon further research, I realized that the doctor threats came during the Clinton administration. My mistake. Sorry about that.
I thought I was no longer shockable. But I was shocked at the nationwide lack of outrage over the Peter McWilliams case. Among the minority who were paying enough attention to even notice the case, it was like, “Oh the government murdered a gay best-selling author, huh? So, what else is new?”
As Nutron Star said, McWilliams had cancer & AIDS. The chemo he was taking caused severe nausea. Only pot could control this. Without pot, he choked to death on his own vomit. I suppose the drug warriors would say he deserved this fate, for the “crime” of using that devil weed.
He could probably have been left alone had he kept quiet, and worked to keep his pot use a secret. But instead, he worked to help others; to inform them of the medicinal value of marijuana, and to make it available to them. Naturally, this could not be permitted.
If this had happened while GWB was president you wouldhave heard the outrage loud and long. But it didn’t. It happened while Clinton was president. And since he can do no wrong there was not anything said or done for the most part.
I disagree, Conflict. It seems to me that the left and right were not in balance in their opinions re Clinton. The left did not love him to anything like the extent to which the right hated him.
I’ve never understood why the right seemed to detest him so much. It isn’t as if he was an extream leftie. He was too moderate, too middle of the road, for the left to ever be very fond of him, so why was he the President the right loved to hate?
Getting back to the topic, it just does not seem to me that people opposed to the war on drugs held back from objecting to the excesses of that war during the Clinton administration out of love for Clinton. No one loved him.