{"id":41855,"date":"2014-02-19T12:20:30","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T18:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41855"},"modified":"2014-10-23T11:06:06","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T16:06:06","slug":"weeds-of-our-discontent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41855","title":{"rendered":"Weeds Of Our Discontent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worst kind of political errors are ones where conservatives give liberals an unearned moral victory in a grab for the high ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carly Melin – who was a 25 year old HamLaw graduate who was airlifted to northern Minnesota precisely in time to meet residency requirements to run for the seat for which the DFL had hand-picked her, when she was elected in 2010 – is taking on Big Law\u00a0Enforcment on their opposition to the proposed Medical Marijuana\u00a0bill<\/a>, in this case in an interview in a Northern Minnesota newspaper (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

[INTERVIEWER]: Gov. Dayton has said he will not sign the medical marijuana bill this legislative session if it does not have support of law enforcement. In fact, he made a campaign promise to that effect. The Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition has made it clear they will not endorse the bill. Where does that leave you?<\/p>\n

[MELIN]: We never expected the bill to be passed as written. We expected to use it as a starting point to discuss legislation going forward. Unfortunately, the Law Enforcement Coalition will not discuss specific provisions of the bill with us, and have instead stated that they are opposed to the legalization of medical marijuana for any purpose<\/strong>. In other words, they have a blanket opposition. This makes it very difficult to have a conversation on how to shape the bill.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Q: Why do you believe MN\u2019s law enforcement agencies are so adamantly opposed to medicinal marijuana?<\/p>\n

A: There are many individual members of law enforcement who are supportive of medical marijuana. In fact, one of them is a co-author of the bill, Rep. Dan Schoen, state representative and police office from Cottage Grove, MN. Law enforcement in northeast Minnesota have discussed some flexibility, which is a lot further than we got with the statewide leaders. It is the head honchos and lobbyists down in St. Paul who are the problem. Marijuana being illegal is big business for law enforcement. The forfeiture of property relating to marijuana crimes brings in big revenue to law enforcement agencies<\/strong>. They are worried that legalizing medical marijuana is a step toward the decriminalization of marijuana, which in turn would impact their budgets. I hope that isn\u2019t the basis of their opposition to medical marijuana because there are sick Minnesotans in need of this medicine, but in my experience carrying this legislation they primarily express concerns that this will lead to the recreational use of marijuana.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leave aside the potential benefits of legalizing recreational marijuana use (I’m not a weed kinda guy, but it’s cut out one of the foundations of the Drug War that’s made parts of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Richfield and the Brooklyns such lovely places); this is pot for sick people.\u00a0 Nothing more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melin’s right – and it’s galling for a libertarian-conservative.\u00a0 Allowing cops, district attorneys and the like set medical policy is just as stupid as letting letting health insurance companies write a national healthcare law.\u00a0 The entire reason for the opposition is the protection of their own little fiscal fiefdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Craig Westover points out on Facebook (I won’t link to it, since not all of you are Facebook members), this is a fundamentally conservative stance, getting government out of the relationship between doctors and patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is an issue where conservatives – especially those who care about liberty in its many forms – should be out front.\u00a0 Not cowering before a law-enforcement group that is largely beholden to “progressivism”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The worst kind of political errors are ones where conservatives give liberals an unearned moral victory in a grab for the high ground.\u00a0 Carly Melin – who was a 25 year old HamLaw graduate who was airlifted to northern Minnesota precisely in time to meet residency requirements to run for the seat for which the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,132],"tags":[319],"class_list":["post-41855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-mn-legislature","tag-the-big-l"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41855"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48401,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41855\/revisions\/48401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}