Marijuana, Chris Christie's Longtime Nemesis, Continues to Be Way, Way More Popular Than He Is 

By Ellie Shechet  |  May 2, 2017 | 3:10pm
Politics

61 percent of Americans approve of recreational marijuana legalization, while just 20 percent of New Jerseyans approve of Gov. Chris Christie. According to math, Chris Christie should probably not throw a loud and extended fit about the dangers of pot, and yet here he is, doing it. Why not, I guess?

At a forum on substance abuse in Princeton, New Jersey on Monday, Christie, a longtime marijuana opponent, referred to tax revenues from marijuana sales as “blood money” and railed against “crazy liberals who want to say everything’s okay.” The Democrat-controlled New Jersey legislature plans to introduce a recreational marijuana legalization bill, which could have a good chance of passing if the historically unpopular governor is replaced by a Democrat in 2018.

Currently, weed is varying degrees of legal in 9 states. In Colorado, where marijuana was legalized in 2014, not much has changed (except they have a lot more money). For some, however, this changing tide has been a tough pill (or bud, as it were) to swallow; in 2015, when asked about a poll showing a majority of young Republicans to approve of recreational marijuana legalization, Christie’s response was: “We can’t focus on what every poll says, everybody.”

It’s “not time for us to be cool and say, ‘pot’s OK,’” said Christie, a powerfully uncool man whose allies were recently sentenced to prison for causing a traffic jam apparently engineered as political retribution. From Politico:

“People like Nick Scutari and Steve Sweeney and Phil Murphy want to bring this poison, legalized, into this state under the premise that, well, it doesn’t matter because people can buy it illegally anyway,” Christie said. “Then why not legalize heroin? I mean, their argument fails just on that basis. Let’s legalize cocaine. Let’s legalize heroin. Let’s legalize angel dust. Let’s legalize all of it. What’s the difference? Let everybody choose.”
The governor cited statistics, without attaching a source, that he said show teenage marijuana users are 10 times more likely to become heroin addicts by the age of 24.

Sounds like that opioid task force is going well!

Personally, I love that this is the hill Chris Christie is choosing to die on—he appears to truly believe, like his colleague Jeff Sessions, that weed is a hippie poison that will corrupt the children of America. Good luck with that, gentlemen.

 
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