One of the memorable moments of the GOP presidential primary debate on Wednesday night was when Jeb Bush – the former Florida governor – said that he smoked weed over four decades ago. Joking that his mother would not be happy about his words, Bush was able to spark some laughs from the audience. This small joke came in the middle of a larger debate about the federal drug laws. Rand Paul defended the legalization by making a point that “kids who had privilege like [Bush]” suffer nothing when admitting they smoked while most minorities are more likely to go to jail for the use of marijuana.
Paul has been deemed “the most marijuana-friendly candidate in the Republican field” even after he circumvented the answer when asked whether or not he has smoked marijuana himself. The other candidates are torn concerning their stances of the legalization of cannabis. Bush, for one, stated that it should be up to the state whether or not marijuana is legalized in their area while others, most notably New Jersey governor Chris Christie, are absolutely against marijuana on every level.
As of right now, twenty-three states have allowed medical marijuana, and four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Many more states are expected to include marijuana legalization in their upcoming ballots; this means that the marijuana market industry could exponentially multiply very soon. The ArcView Group, a firm that researches the marijuana industry, expects the legal marijuana market to reach approximately $11 billion in revenue annually by 2019. Colorado has already begun generating more money from marijuana than alcohol according to their reports.
Jeb Bush may have sparked some news on Wednesday, but he is not the first person to admit to having smoked marijuana. Here are just a few presidential candidates of the present and past that have admitted to using the drug as well: Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, George Pataki, Rick Santorum, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Bruce Babbitt, Newt Gingrich, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean.
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