Georgia legislators have been busy. With an economy tanking and foreclosures rising, politicians in Georgia have taken action to ban candy that is favored to taste like pot like Kronic Kandy and Pot Suckers. The effort is led by a real stoner, Rep. Doug Stoner to be specific. (Sure, I posted this primarily for the pun, but there is a slim legal issue discovered below)
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed the bill this week, banning such sales of “marijuana flavored products” to minors. Any last trips to buy Pot Suckers will have to occur before July 1st.
Georgia’s Stoner says” “I don’t think that folks are aware this is going on. It’s mainly, from what I can tell, particularly targeted to minority communities.” Well, Stoner sure found out about it.
The question is whether this even satisfies a rational basis test to restrict these manufacturers. There is no high from this candy and no data showing that such candy turns people into . . . well . . . stoners.
For the full story, click here.
I’m actually a fan of Doug’s: I went to high school in the district he now represents, and he came and visited one of my economics classes to talk about how he ran his Dairy Queen stores and running for office (because of some seriously screwed up shenanigans, he was on the ballot that time as an independent since the Dems chucked him off when the Republican incumbent, Randy Saunders, switched parties hours before the filing deadline). He may have been the last independent candidate I supported over a Democrat, but he lost that election after someone started printing doctored photos of him in Klan robes and claiming that he was a relative of J.B. Stoner (he isn’t – I think Doug is actually Jewish), and got elected after the Republican-turned-Democrat got his butt kicked by angry Republican voters and Democrats who’d hated him for years.
His first run was basically my introduction to the way the state Democratic Party operated in Georgia. It wasn’t two years after that we lost the Governor’s Mansion for the first time since Reconstruction.