(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Minnesota is poised to legalize cannabis, and these GOP state legislators are losing it [1] ['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags'] Date: 2023-04-29 On Tuesday, the Minnesota House approved a cannabis legalization bill 71-59, and on Friday the state Senate passed its own version, along party lines, by a single vote. After the House and Senate hash out their differences, the final bill will go to Gov. Tim Walz, who has promised to sign it into law. The House bill allows Minnesotans to carry up to two ounces of weed in public and grow up to eight marijuana plants in their homes. And that hardly sits well with folks like Minnesota state Sen. Warren Limmer, who describes what he supposes is a future dystopian nightmare but actually sounds a lot like stoner heaven. x “Just two ounces is equivalent to three joints” — the Republican arguments against legal cannabis are going well. #mnleg pic.twitter.com/PYxftaaMtq — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2023 LIMMER: “Any person can have eight plants at home. Now, I’ve seen some of the videos of DEA raids. Some of these plants are 8 to 10 feet tall. You can have eight of them. You can have a privacy fence made of these products in your backyard. Two ounces. Just two ounces is equivalent to three joints.” Wait, it is? I never expected to be saying this when I woke up this morning, but I want to party with Minnesota state Sen. Warren Limmer. Big-time. Because those are some fat spliffs he’s been passing around, yo. Two ounces of weed would last me months. And yeah, I could have eight 10-foot plants in my backyard, but I wouldn’t do much other than look at them—and at the squirrels mysteriously dropping out of trees roughly every 20 seconds like wet coconuts. But Limmer wasn’t the only Minnesota Republican who seems congenitally clueless about marijuana. Here’s state Sen. John Jasinski, another GOPster. x I don’t know how to explain to you that other states have legal cannabis and are doing fine pic.twitter.com/J4Q3H2Ww4h — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2023 JASINSKI: “I think if this bill passes today in Minnesota, Minnesota is going to go up in smoke.” Clever! But that hasn’t happened anywhere cannabis has been made legal. In fact, legalization appears to have had little substantive impact beyond fattening governments’ budgets and creating jobs. Meanwhile, as any stoner who’s also been a drinker knows, there’s essentially no such thing as a cannabis overdose, whereas people die every day from alcohol poisoning. So someone please let Sen. Steve Green know. x pour one out for all the victims of cannabis overdoses. RIP pic.twitter.com/beHrWQ1LIF — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 29, 2023 GREEN: “You take it to my home where I live and the small community that has five overdoses a week, and that’s just the ones they count anymore that make it to the emergency room, and they figure it’s way more because of the NARCAN pens. And so I hope that you’re listening out there, because this thing is likely going to pass here today, the governor will gladly sign it, and the people at home in their communities are going to have to put a tight ring on what’s going on because their families are going to suffer from this, absolutely. This is a gateway drug. I’ve been around a long time on this Earth and I can tell you, I’ve seen this. I’ve seen it from the time I was a boy when the levels were small, up to today.” Not to get too far into the weeds (see what I did there?), but it would be really hard to conclusively establish that cannabis is a gateway drug. “Correlation is not causation” and all that. After all, it’s hardly surprising that a person willing to use one illicit drug would also be willing to use another. As for overdoses, there’s actually some credible evidence that cannabis legalization could lead to declines in opioid overdoses. And once again here’s Jasinski, who’s really worried about people driving under the influence of cannabis, presumably because they could hit an innocent drunk driver like him. x the same Republican who is against weed because it made him lazy talks about getting a DUI during the same speech pic.twitter.com/AjofBUUyaA — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 29, 2023 JASINSKI: “We’ve heard time and time again there’s no roadside tests. And I’ll get personal again because you all know about it, it’s been in every newspaper in the state. I got pulled over a couple years [ago] for [an[] alcohol-related offense. I tested a .09. So folks, I was one beer over. One beer too many. And I’ve always been very careful about it. There’s a weight scale and how many drinks you can have per hour and what your weight is, and you can go through that and you can kind of see where you’re at. So I was a .09. One beer over. What happens with testing with marijuana? How are they going to know what that percentage is? They don’t have the test for it yet. And yet the effective date of this bill is going to into effect before we have that? It amazes me.” To be clear, I’m strongly opposed to driving after using cannabis—partly because it’s reckless and partly because I don’t want to go anywhere after smoking anyway, and you can order Peanut Butter Oreos through Instacart now. But to be clear, using cannabis alone (i.e., without alcohol) and then driving is far, far less dangerous than drinking and driving. In fact, it’s not even close. And this information comes from the same government that has waged a useless and pernicious war on drugs for decades. Banning cannabis never made any sense, of course—particularly in a country that fetishizes alcohol to the degree that we do. But hey, common sense is in short supply in the GOP these days. Unlike impossibly giant joints, apparently. Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/29/2166582/-Minnesota-is-about-to-legalize-cannabis-and-these-GOP-state-legislators-are-losing-it Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/