Marijuana Federalists Lead the Republican Field
Chris Christie, the most pugilistic prohibitionist in the race, remains stuck in single digits.
Chris Christie has made no bones about his intent to shut down marijuana legalization if he is elected president. But Republican voters do not seem to be attracted by Christie's cannabis combativeness. The New Jersey governor, who finished eighth in the Iowa caucus on Monday and may take sixth place in New Hampshire next Tuesday, has never scored higher than 5 percent in national polls. Meanwhile, as I explain in my latest Forbes column, most of the other Republican candidates, including the two at the top, have explicitly rejected the heavy-handed federal intervention Christie favors:
With Rand Paul ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the GOP race has lost its strongest supporter of drug policy reform. But the remaining Republican candidates are for the most part not as retrograde in this area as you might expect, especially on the question of how the federal government should respond to state legalization of marijuana.