Democrats Should Get Higher on Weed in 2018

can't argue with anything here.
The Party needs to embrace the fact that Prohibition is a failed PUBLIC POLICY! AGAIN!!!!!!

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-should-get-higher-on-weed-in-2018.html

The Democratic Party is long past due for its “come to cannabis” moment.

The fact that Team Blue hasn’t already embraced marijuana legalization as a signature issue is political malpractice. In our hyperpolarized era, there aren’t many policies that energize one party’s base, while also appealing to a majority of the other party’s voters. Legal weed is one.

And yet, Democrats have passed on this potent hybrid of a “wedge” and mobilization issue. Even as 420-friendly, third-party candidates began eating into Hillary Clinton’s advantage among younger voters in 2016, the Democratic nominee “just said no” to federal legalization of marijuana. Coming out in favor of regulating cannabis like alcohol would have put the Clinton campaign into better alignment with millennial opinion; sharpened its message on criminal justice reform; and won it the enthusiastic support of underserved advocacy organizations, all while undermining the perception of Hillary as an overly cautious politician unwilling to take bold stands on behalf of progressive priorities.

Given the narrowness of Clinton’s losses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and her lackluster performance among voters under 40 (roughly 74 percent of whom support marijuana legalization) — it’s quite possible that America could have been spared the Trump presidency, had Hillary only gotten a bit higher on legal weed.

But America had no such luck. And now, the Justice Department is helmed by a man who sees little distinction between pot brownies and speedballs. On Thursday, Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era policy that had enabled states to pursue marijuana legalization without threat of federal interference, so long as they took measures to prevent reefer from getting into the hands of minors or criminal gangs. U.S. Attorneys still have the prosecutorial discretion to leave dispensaries be. But they now have the permission (and encouragement) of the attorney general to disrupt legal weed markets, if they so choose. At present, eight states have legalized the recreational use of cannabis.