Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is a well-known denier of rights here in Arizona, especially if you’re a woman or Latinx. Most recently, Montgomery and Gov. Doug Ducey spearheaded this election’s anti-205 campaign. And they succeeded: of all the states that had medical or recreational weed on the ballot, Arizona is the only place where voters rejected the initiative. The state has had medical weed since 2010, and up until a few weeks before the election it looked like Prop 205, modeled after Colorado’s law, would pass.
Then the anti-205 folks, led in part by Montgomery, with millions of dollars from winger businesses, including the alcohol industry, started running fear-mongering TV commercials that were full of bull. The ads, which saturated the airwaves, claimed that Colorado schools never received the money they were promised; they also said more students are getting high since pot was legalized. Both are lies. The ads were so dishonest Colorado legislators sent a letter to the anti-205 campaign telling them to quite lying about the results in their state since legalization, which includes more money to schools than the amount anticipated. But the 24/7 ads did their damage and 205 narrowly lost.
Trump’s been appointing Arizona officials to his team lately and clearly Montgomery is lobbying for a seat. He’s just bonkers, comparing pot smoking to slavery during his anti-weed speaking tour. Today he said the new president should crack down on renegade states that have approved medical or recreational marijuana — laws that go against the federal government’s outrageous DEA drug schedule that classifies pot alongside heroin, cocaine and other controlled substances.
Montgomery said he hopes that Trump's administration will work with the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress to bring state programs into alignment and put medical marijuana under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval process….
"We ought to end the charade, and the next administration has the opportunity to do so," he said.
If Montgomery wants to help Trump go after medical marijuana, imagine what he thinks about the states that legalized recreational weed. An Islamophobe, homophobe and every other kind of phobe you can imagine, Montgomery pleads “states rights” when it comes to passing abortion laws that are more restrictive than the feds allow (for now), but he’s more than happy to set aside the same states rights bullshit when it comes to his ineffective, expensive and cruel war on pot.
How cruel? Montgomery and other Reefer Madness jerkwads even tried to stop a seriously ill Arizona child from using THC, even though the tincture was the only thing that provided relief.
Zander [Welton], who began having seizures before his first birthday because of a rare condition called cortical dysplasia, would never have received the concentrated-marijuana tincture that helped him if it were up to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
Can this hypocritical peckerhead go any lower? Yes:
Don Ream, a white-haired Vietnam veteran who had helped commission a Navy Explorer … explained to Montgomery that he legally used medical marijuana for back pain and admitted to using pot recreationally...
Montgomery said, “I have no respect for you. And I have no respect for someone who would try to claim that you served this country and took an oath to uphold the constitution and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic, because you’re an enemy.”
The crowd booed.
Later, when confronted by reporters, Montgomery doubled down, calling Ream “an enemy of our constitution,” as if the founding fathers had ideas about cannabis.
Hurting children, slamming veterans — perfect for Trump’s circle of jerks.