Would Romney Be Worse for Medical Marijuana Than Obama?

Anyone who wants to argue that Romney would be worse when it comes to medical marijuana should begin by explaining how. Obama's been worse on this issue than George W. Bush ever was, so what's to say he wouldn't be worse than Romney too?
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President Obama has been taking a lot of well-deserved heat for his disjointed and disappointing approach to medical marijuana. Of course, with an election approaching, Obama supporters are struggling to explain why the many Americans who care deeply about this issue should support this president following his badly broken promises and recent false statements. An argument I've been hearing a lot is that Mitt Romney would be even more of a monster when it comes to medical marijuana policy.

But why would anyone assume that? Because he's a Republican? Obama's been worse on this issue than George W. Bush ever was, so what's to say he wouldn't be worse than Romney too? There's no logical basis at all for assuming that one party is just automatically going to be better when it comes to respecting state laws that protect medical marijuana patients. A strong majority of voters on the left and the right support medical marijuana, so it's not like Romney's supporters are asking him to go on the attack.

Sure, we've heard Romney say he's not in favor of medical cannabis, but only when he's been pressured for a comment on it. His statements have been brief and evasive, utterly lacking the vigorous drug warrior convictions often attributed to him. Romney certainly isn't running around on the campaign trail making threats or saying anything at all to justify the knee-jerk assumption that he'd be more of a horror show than the aggressively anti-pot president we already have.

Anyone who wants to argue that Romney would be worse when it comes to medical marijuana should begin by explaining how. Really, how would he be worse? The Obama Administration is already doing every single awful thing that can be done short of suspending all other federal law enforcement functions and spending the next 4 years demolishing dispensaries one at a time. They're raiding businesses, prosecuting providers, intimidating landlords, suing operators on bogus tax claims, threatening to arrest state regulators, blocking medical research, and even banning gun ownership by patients. I honestly doubt Romney could be any worse than this if he tried.

For some horrible reason, the Obama Administration is at war with medical marijuana on every imaginable front and it's ridiculous to rationalize any of this with fictitious partisan comparisons. That's pure political hackery that serves only to distract us from placing the blame where it belongs. Anyone who wants to help re-elect the president should stop making excuses for what he's done and instead insist that he clean up his act before November.

Looking at the polling on medical marijuana, you'd think the debate would be over which candidate supports it more, not who hates it less.

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