In an editorial published by the Gateway Pundit, Roger Stone said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ “aggressiveness” and “obvious plan to reignite” the War on Drugs is “in direct contradiction to the position” of President Donald Trump, “who very clearly” supported states’ rights to implement medical cannabis policies.
“Recently I launched a bipartisan effort – the United States Cannabis Coalition – to persuade [Trump] to honor this pledge made during the presidential campaign to respect the states’ rights to legalize marijuana,” Stone, who served as an advisor to Trump during his campaign, wrote. “We want the President to order [Sessions] to continue to honor the ‘Holder Memo’ which ordered the feds to stand down on enforcement in the states where cannabis has been legalized under President Obama.”
In the article, Stone also derided the Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo boycott that successfully led to his ouster as keynote speaker at both the Los Angeles, California and Boston, Massachusetts events.
The boycott was organized by the Minority Cannabis Business Association because of several racist and misogynistic statements Stone has made throughout his political career. Stone wrote that he had already apologized for his “sarcastic” use of the word “negro.” In response to the accusations of misogynistic and anti-Semitic language, he wrote, “Criticism of individual women does not make one a misogynist nor does criticism of an individual Jewish person make you an anti-Semite.”
“Even though this attack on me was both orchestrated and based on a false narrative of who I am in what my motives are [sic] I was deeply disappointed in the organizers of the expo who canceled my speech, stampeded by a small but well-organized group of loudmouths more interested in scoring political points than in the future of continued legal access to cannabis,” he wrote.
Stone argues that the boycott’s assertion that he should be prevented from speaking because of his support for Richard Nixon, who launched the War on Drugs, Ronald Reagan, whose administration began the “Just Say No” campaign which further demonized cannabis use, and Trump is misguided because “when it comes to the failed, expensive and racist war on drugs, both parties are complicit and there’s plenty of blame to go around.” In his defense, he cites the 1994 Crime Bill supported by President Bill Clinton, which he calls “among the most racist tools of the war on drugs,” and he also claims that former Vice President Joe Biden’s record shows, “he is perhaps the greatest drug warrior of all time.”
“Despite all of this I am prepared to work with any Democrat, liberal, or socialist who supports legalized cannabis and wants to avert the reigniting of the war on drugs under [Trump],” he wrote. “I will not be silenced by a small group of people who have accomplished nothing in the current struggle to preserve the states’ rights to legalize marijuana. I have the ear of the President. Do they?”
Although Stone was bounced from the CWCB events, he will be speaking in Los Angeles during the expo at noon on Sept. 14 at the Alchemy Lounge.
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