Backassward Award

The winner of the July 2009 Backassward award goes to Hawaii’s Republican Governor Linda Lingle. On Monday, Governor Lingle vetoed Senate Bill 1058, which called on the legislature to merely study “issues relating to medical cannabis patients and current medical cannabis laws.”
The true motive behind prohibitionist Gov Lingle’s action is to silence any sort of public or political debate surrounding America’s failed marijuana policies.

Today in California television ads were slated to begin running in support of Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act — which seeks to legalize, tax, and regulate the retail sale of cannabis to adults in California. I say “were” because many major television outlets have refused — without comment — to air the television spots. Keep in mind, this network blackout is taking place in a state that has already established a regulated market for the distribution of medical cannabis, and whose voters solidly support legalizing the personal consumption of pot by adults.

Prohibitionists will use any means necessary to stifle honest, open debate because they know that they have no legitimate basis to defend marijuana prohibition. Their ardent refusal to even discuss the issue — and their strong arm tactics to intimidate others from discussing it as well — confirm this fact.

Nevertheless, despite their underhanded stalling tactics, the ‘national debate’ that the prohibitionists have so long feared has already taken place. Granted it did not take place in public forum; rather, and more significantly, it took place in the hearts and minds of the American voter. And we won — hands down. We know it and our opponents know it.

And so does Gov. Linda Lingle.