Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) went after President Barack Obama's drug policy on Friday, but not before cracking a joke about marijuana legalization.
As part of his Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) keynote speech, Cruz executed a one-liner linking pot shops in Colorado and food served at the event.
“A whole lot of folks now are talking about legalizing pot,” Cruz told onlookers. “The brownies you had this morning, provided by the state of Colorado.”
(Watch Cruz's remarks on drugs above, beginning at the 7:20 mark)
Drawing laughter from the crowd, Cruz moved onto more serious matters, accusing the Obama administration of bypassing "commonsense changes" with Congress on drug policy, in favor of their own views.
“You could go to Congress, you can get a conversation, you could get Democrats and Republicans who would say, ‘We ought to change our drug policy in some way,’ and you could have a real conversation, you could have hearings, you could look at the problem, you could discuss commonsense changes that maybe should happen or shouldn’t happen,” Cruz said. “This president didn’t do that. He just said, ‘The laws say one thing’ — and mind you these are criminal laws, these are laws that say if you do ‘X, Y, and Z’ you will go to prison. The president announced, ‘No, you won’t.’”
Three months earlier, one poll showed residents in Texas are in favor of legalizing marijuana. A Public Policy Polling survey released in October found that 58 percent of Texans supported "making marijuana legal for adults and regulating it like alcohol," and 61 percent were in favor of decriminalizing marijuana possession.
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