Last night on his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver discussed the issue of marijuana and marijuana legalization, or as he called it “catnip for people.” One highlight of the election was medical marijuana being legalized in eight states. However, many people trying to get legal marijuana still have trouble getting it and keeping it.
Oliver said this about election night:
“One small bright spot on election night was pro-marijuana referenda passing in eight states. It’s a little weird that celebrations happened on the same night Trump was elected. It’s like celebrating your baseball team winning on the deck of the sinking Titanic.”
At the federal level, it is still on the Schedule 1 classification (the same as cocaine and heroin). Research suggests that marijuana is less dangerous than even legal drugs such as tobacco.
One man was fired for using legal medical marijuana because he failed a drug test. One couple even had their child taken away because there was marijuana in the house. The father was using it to treat his seizures.
As Oliver says:
“That’s like driving exactly the speed limit and getting pulled over by a cop, who tells you ‘Sorry, the federal speed limit is three, and the legal age to drive is 62, and also you have to be drunk.’ ”
The Obama administration made marijuana state laws okay; however, those rules are not permanent. Our new Attorney General Jeff Sessions is against marijuana, so these laws could go away.
Sessions once said:
“I think one of [Obama’s] great failures, it’s obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana. It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started ‘Just Say No.’ ”
He continued:
“… Knowledge that this drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about . . . and to send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
Check out the segment below:
Featured image via YouTube screenshot.
