Drug policy is emerging as a campaign issue in the Texas Senate race, according to local media reports. On Tuesday, Republican incumbent Ted Cruz attacked Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke for his pro-cannabis stance. O’Rourke currently represents Texas’ 16th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
While on the campaign trail, Cruz talked with reporters about a story in conservative media published earlier in the day. That story said that as a member of the El Paso City Council, O’Rourke had called for legalizing all narcotics.
In 2009, O’Rourke had introduced an addition to a resolution on the war on drugs passed by the city council. His amendment actually merely called for “honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics.”
And at the time, he was clear he wasn’t calling for the legalization of all drugs.
“I’m not saying that we need to do that – to end the prohibition,” O’Rourke said in a 2009 council meeting. “I think we need to have a serious discussion about doing that, and that may, in the end, be the right course of action.”
But that didn’t stop Cruz from running with the story. He suggested to reporters at a San Antonio campaign stop that O’Rourke wanted to legalize all drugs. Interestingly, he left that possibility open for cannabis.
“Reasonable minds, perhaps, can differ on whether marijuana should be illegal, but what Congressman O’Rourke introduced was a resolution for the City Council to take up legalizing all narcotics, legalizing everything, legalizing heroin, legalizing deadly opioids,” Cruz said.
“As this country is facing a crisis — an opioid crisis … and in light of that growing tragedy, Congressman O’Rourke’s radical proposal to legalize all narcotics is a suggestion that might be very popular