A former White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump is calling out his home state South Carolina Republican Party (SCGOP) for opposing a bill to legalize medical marijuana.<\/p>\n
Mick Mulvaney, who was Trump\u2019s top aide for over a year and also served as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, says the local legislation\u00a0is \u201csomething that merits discussion and reasoned analysis,\u201d even if it\u2019s not a proposal that is conventionally considered a conservative priority.<\/p>\n
And he sharply criticized SCGOP for repeatedly standing in the way of reform, in part by recently paying to circulate a message from a sheriff opposing the state-level effort. The party apparatus has also vocally opposed a congressional bill to end federal prohibition that was filed by a Republican congresswoman representing the state.<\/p>\n
South Carolina Sen. Tom Davis (R) recently revamped his push for enact the reform in the state legislature<\/a>, with the Senate initiating debate on the proposal last week.<\/p>\n In an op-ed<\/a> for FITSNews that was published on Thursday, Mulvaney wrote that a medical cannabis bill the state Senate has been debating<\/a> this month \u201cdoes not fall neatly into any pre-existing notion of Republican orthodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n Damn \u2026 @MickMulvaney<\/a> coming in STRONG in support of @SenTomDavisSC<\/a> and his compassionate care bill \u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/5WTlRVbTGA<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 FITSNews (@fitsnews) February 3, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cBy allowing doctors the right to prescribe medical-quality cannabis (derived from marijuana) for certain severely-ill patients, the bill raises issues related to everything from law enforcement to allowing patients and doctors more control over health care decisions,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is then, the precise sort of proposal that screams out for reasoned debate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mulvaney, who previously represented South Carolina in the state House and Senate, and later in Congress, said that he would have \u201cwelcomed such a discussion\u201d as a legislator.<\/p>\n But the leaders of his own state party see it differently. Last month, SCGOP paid to circulate a message from a sheriff attacking Davis\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n In a lengthy message paid for by the S.C. GOP (@SCGOP<\/a>), Aiken County Sheriff Mike Hunt comes out swinging against medical marijuana.<\/p>\n And at the bottom of the email: \u201cIn a time where law enforcement officers are facing more hatred, mistrust, and even threats to defund\u2026\u201d pic.twitter.com\/q9nVDpcFGF<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Colin Demarest (@demarest_colin) January 21, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The state medical cannabis bill, sponsored by Sen. Tom Davis (R) was prefiled in late 2020 and passed out of the Senate Medical Affairs Committee<\/a> that March, but it has faced resistance from some members of his party. A lone senator blocked the legislation from reaching the chamber floor in 2021, though Davis later got a commitment from chamber leaders to prioritize it for consideration this year.<\/p>\n At one point, Davis came to the defense of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate<\/a>\u00a0in the state, former U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), after Cunningham campaigned on cannabis legalization and drew criticism from the state GOP chairman\u00a0for wanting to \u201cplay with fire.\u201d<\/p>\n In a\u00a0since-deleted tweet<\/a>, Davis called the statement from his party \u201can intellectually lazy position that doesn\u2019t even try to present medical facts as they currently exist.\u201d<\/p>\n In the new op-ed, Mulvaney also pointed to federal \u201cRight To Try\u201d legislation that was enacted under the Trump administration<\/a> to give certain patients access to investigational drug therapies that haven\u2019t been formally approved by regulatory bodies. He compared that reform measure to the South Carolina senator\u2019s cannabis bill.<\/p>\n \u201cIf that debate had taken place, the party might also have been made aware of the overwhelming public support for limited medical marijuana,\u201d he wrote, citing a poll released last year finding that\u00a0South Carolina voters support legalizing medical marijuana<\/a>\u00a0by a five-to-one ratio.<\/p>\n During his time in Congress, Mulvaney consistently voted to support marijuana reform amendments and cosponsored cannabis bills. In 2015, for example, he voted for a floor\u00a0amendment<\/a> that would have barred the Justice Department from spending money to interfere with state marijuana laws. He\u00a0also\u00a0voted<\/a>\u00a0for the medical\u00a0marijuana<\/a>\u00a0rider\u00a0three<\/a> years in a row, among other reforms.<\/p>\n Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who filed a GOP-led bill to federally legalize marijuana<\/a> late last year, said in a tweet that the former administration official\u2019s op-ed represents an \u201cimportant take on medical cannabis reform.\u201d<\/p>\n Important take on medical cannabis reform from @MickMulvaney<\/a>. Check it out: https:\/\/t.co\/ZpvYYpIJv8<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) February 3, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Her bill has also faced resistance from the state\u2019s Republican party, with Chairman Drew McKissick issuing a statement following its introduction stating that the organization opposes \u201cany\u201d effort to end prohibition<\/a> and making clear that the congresswoman\u2019s bill was no exception.<\/p>\n In the op-ed, Mulvaney wrote that SCGOP leadership has \u201cignored the public polling data, ignored the precedent set by the national party in Washington and the previous Republican President, and even ignored their own elected Republican officials.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat isn\u2019t how a political party\u2014or at least my political party\u2014is supposed to act,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the SCGOP needs to withdraw its opposition to Senator Davis\u2019 bill\u2014publicly\u2014at least long enough to engage in the kind of intelligent, thoughtful, and reasoned analysis that some of us believe can and should be a hallmark of South Carolina Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis has championed medical marijuana in South Carolina since 2014, and at a rally last month brought out a binder that he said contained eight years of research into the issue. He said he would use the information to \u201ctake on every single argument that has been raised in opposition to this bill, and I\u2019m going to show that they cannot stand in the way of facts and evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Support for medical marijuana legalization among South Carolina residents has been notably stable, as a 2018 Benchmark Research poll similarly found 72 percent support for the reform, including nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Republicans. Davis said last year that if the legislature didn\u2019t advance the reform, he\u2019d propose a bill to\u00a0put the question of medical marijuana legalization to voters<\/a>\u00a0through a referendum.<\/p>\n Also in 2018, 82 percent of voters in the state\u2019s Democratic primary election\u00a0voted in favor of medical cannabis legalization<\/a>\u00a0in a nonbinding ballot advisory vote.<\/p>\n Missing from Mulvaney\u2019s op-ed is recognition that while Trump has expressed support for medical marijuana, he did not take steps to loosen federal restrictions on the plant and even went so far as to issue a signing statement saying he reserved the right to ignore a congressional rider<\/a> seeking to protect medical cannabis states from federal interferences.<\/p>\n And what\u2019s more, Trump\u2019s reelection campaign in late 2020 issued a cease and desist order against a Mississippi medical marijuana legalization campaign<\/a>, claiming \u201cunauthorized and misleading representation\u201d of the president\u2019s position on the reform initiative in one of its mailers\u2014even though he has on multiple occasions spoken favorably on camera about medical cannabis.<\/p>\n Utah Lawmakers Vote To Study Benefits Of Psychedelics In Treating Mental Health Disorders<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Former Top Trump Aide Slams South Carolina Republican Party Over Medical Marijuana Opposition<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A former White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump is calling out his home state South Carolina Republican Party (SCGOP) for opposing a bill to legalize medical marijuana. Mick Mulvaney, who was Trump\u2019s top aide for over a year and also served as director of the White HouseContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52729,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52728\/revisions\/52729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Former Top Trump Aide Slams South Carolina Republican Party Over Medical Marijuana Opposition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"