At CPAC, support for DC’s marijuana laws

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At CPAC, support for DC’s marijuana laws

The conference’s libertarian streak favors the District.
By Kristen Doerer
Published March 2, 2015

Marijuana became legal in DC last week, despite threatening talk from the head of the House Oversight Committee and impediments thrown into place by other conservatives in Congress. But at CPAC, the annual gathering of conservatives at National Harbor that ended Saturday, views on pot were more attenuated.

I spoke on Thursday with a group of students from the University of North Florida who had no qualms about marijuana legalization. When I told them that DC had legalized marijuana that day, one of them began clapping while the other two nodded in approval.

It was in this group of students that I found a self-proclaimed libertarian. “I’m definitely for state power, and DC isn’t necessarily a state, but it should have the power to enforce its own laws,” said UNF student Dylan Lowe, who is from Miami.

Among the students I spoke with, none thought states had no right to legalize marijuana. But a debate Thursday onstage in the Potomac ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center showed a divide among attendees on the issue. ... “Having a debate on whether or not to legalize marijuana is like debating whether the sun is going to come up tomorrow. It’s going to come up,” Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, libertarian presidential candidate, and current CEO of Cannabis Sativa Inc said.