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What Does The Democratic Nominee Really Think About Weed?
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She’s the liberal candidate in the two-party system—which is interesting sometimes.
Published on June 29, 2016

As a great many of my fellow lefties have relished pointing out for the past year that Hillary Clinton is far too cozy with Wall Street type special interest groups, I can’t argue against it, and won’t attempt to in this article. Hillary has taken God knows how much money from some of the most egregiously evil capitalist enterprises on the planet, including more than a few checks cut by investment giant Goldman Sachs, a firm that specializes in providing Secretaries of the Treasury to royally fuck American workers. It makes me uneasy, and I know I’m not alone.

If this were another year, and she were running against a republican who, though repugnant, may not have seemed determined to end the world as we know it, I would probably cast my vote for Dr. Jill Stein, who agrees with so many more of my ideals than Hillary’s I stopped counting.

But I don’t have that luxury this year, when the Republican voters of this country ignored the barbarism knocking at the gates and heartily embraced their new overlord. I will vote for Hillary, and not Dr. Stein, because a Trump Presidency scares every part of me and despite the fact that on the issue I’m most often forced to confront conflict in the name of, Hillary Clinton has yet to say anything of substance.

Hillary’s main dodge to the marijuana question during a primary battle that saw her pitted against Bernie Sanders, an outspoken advocate of legalization, was to say that as a Schedule I drug, no research had yet been done, so she would reschedule cannabis to Schedule II.

This is doublespeak.

Cocaine is a Schedule II drug, for one thing. For another, It is not impossible to do research, only unnecessarily difficult because of federal regulations that as president, Clinton would be in a unique position to help loosen—if that’s something she were really into doing. But with $2,934,221 in campaign donations coming directly from pharmaceutical companies, I somehow doubt changing her rhetoric on pot—which is to say, introducing significant rhetoric on pot—is part of Hillary’s game plan.

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Tim Baker
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Tim Baker is a New York-based writer and sometimes editor whose work has appeared in Newsweek, TV Guide, CBS and Discovery Special Editions, and can regularly be found at thrillist.com. He has an MFA in creative writing from The New School and also attended Hunter College of the City University of New York.
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