Pubdate: Thu, 22 May 2014
Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/chico/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/559
Author: Melissa Daugherty

BACKPEDALING

Supervisor Bill Connelly wavers on pot

A friend of mine got the nicest Mother's Day card this year-a
postcard, actually. On the front is a photo of an adorable black and
white puppy with a "Happy Mother's Day" salutation. It's just the
sweetest thing.

Then there's the flip side: a portrait of Butte County Supervisor Bill
Connelly-"assessor for the people!" In the text area, the card reads:
"To my mom and my wife, and to all the moms who work hard to provide a
better life for their families. Happy Mother's Day from my family to
yours."

I guess mine got lost in the mail.

In any case, this is either the most brilliant or sleaziest campaign
mailer I've ever seen. I'm undecided.

Speaking of Connelly, I recently stumbled upon a link posted on one of
our stories to a Youtube video of him speaking to the Magalia Tea
Party. During his talk in early December, Connelly said medical
marijuana should be knocked down from a schedule 1 to a schedule 2
narcotic and be sold in pharmacies at best and tobacco stores at
worst. He went on to say that he'd talked to a reporter for a story
that ran in the Sacramento News & Review about this stance, but that
his position was not made clear.

Then he talked about how the CN&R called him to take his portrait
because we were going to reprint the story in Chico. Connelly charges
on the video that he told us he would "love to come in and talk to
you, we could have a debate, we're not always going to agree-blah,
blah, blah."

Newsflash: That never happened. Connelly never called this paper to
clarify his position. He didn't talk to me or any of the other
editors about this. Moreover, he agreed to have his photo taken
knowing full well that the story was about the failures of marijuana
prohibition and the war on drugs.

What he did do, several weeks later, was send a letter to the editor
via snail mail that said marijuana laws create the same problems as
Prohibition did with alcohol and that the federal government should
regulate pot for sale. In other words, he thinks it should be
legalized and regulated like cigarettes and tobacco. That's pretty
much the gist of what was said in the story we printed.

So why the weird backpedaling at that Tea Party meeting? My guess is
that Connelly was afraid of being labeled as pro-legalization as he
was about to embark on a campaign for the assessor position in the
June primary. Connelly has acknowledged that he represents thousands
of pot-growers, but he knows thousands more in this conservative
county are against cannabis.

I don't appreciate Connelly's squirrelly way of downplaying his
stance. (He's right. The only way to cure the ills of rogue growers,
including the environmental degradation they cause, is to bring
cannabis into the light through legalization.) But that's not why he
didn't get CN&R's endorsement for county assessor (see "Primary
picks," page 4). That's simply because he's unqualified.
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MAP posted-by: Matt