A race starting in Houstonians’ livings rooms could set the stage for one of the state’s most expensive gubernatorial races ever.
But in his early run for governor, O’Rourke, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has repeatedly mentioned legalizing marijuana on the campaign trail across Texas. Advocates hope the increased attention will give momentum to legalization efforts in a state with some of the harshest penalties and highest arrest rates for marijuana possession.
O’Rourke’s advocacy around the issue dates back at least to his time on the El Paso City Council in 2009 when he pushed for a resolution calling on Congress to have “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition” of marijuana.
Despite unanimously passing the city council, then-Mayor John Cook vetoed the nonbinding measure. Cook got some help from then-U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who warned council members the city could lose federal funds if they continued with their effort.
O’Rourke went on to challenge and defeat Reyes in the 2012 Democratic primary for his congressional seat. During that race, Reyes released an ad attacking O’Rourke’s position on marijuana legalization.
“Legalizing drugs is not the answer. Even our children understand that,” a narrator said in a video campaign ad that showed children shaking their heads. “Say NO to Drugs. Say NO to Beto.”
While O’Rourke did not campaign on the policy throughout that race, advocates at the time pointed to his victory as a sign of the changing attitudes around marijuana legalization.
O’Rourke’s viewpoint is influenced by his hometown of El Paso, which he writes about extensively in his 2011 book “Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico,” co-written with fellow City Council member Susie Byrd.
For 15 years before 2008, there was an average of 236 murders per year in Ciudad Juárez, the sister city of El Paso, O’Rourke wrote. That number rose to 316 in 2007 before skyrocketing to 1,623 in 2008. There was a “pernicious influence,” O’Rourke wrote: the “multibillion dollar hemispheric vice between supply and demand,” where “North America consumes illegal drugs” and “Mexico supplies them.”
A judge temporarily blocked Texas from listing delta-8 as a Schedule I drug, which effectively made it illegal.
The book draws a correlation between government crackdowns on the illicit trade and the number of murders. By…
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