America’s Renfield, Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, will be leaving Congress at the end of June. Quiet down with your celebration party. Rep. Chaffetz leaves all kinds of destruction in his wake. The bill he proposed to sell off public lands to private corporations, and then lied about withdrawing, is still being moved through committees of fellow craven Republicans. Having wasted millions of taxpayer dollars investigating any document that could be tangentially connected to Hillary Clinton over the past four years, Rep. Chaffetz leaves the House continuing to not do his job in protecting our government from ethics violations. And as The Salt Lake Tribune writes, Rep. Chaffetz has helped create a flourishing underground marijuana market in the town where he was “working” all these years.
Chaffetz, R-Utah, helped lead the charge to block a voter-approved law in the District of Columbia to legalize adult marijuana use in 2015. Congress didn't overturn the law but prohibited the district from using any money to implement it, meaning that while residents age 21 and older can possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana and smoke legally in their own homes, the city couldn't set up any system for weed to be legally sold.
Enter the city's nonlicensed, nonregulated purveyors of pot who were more than happy to step up and sell their product to a new customer base.
"Not only has [congressional action] blocked us from writing responsible laws, it empowered the gray market and I guess you could call it the underground economy," says Adam Eidinger, who successfully pushed for passage of D.C.'s Initiative 71 that received more than 70 percent of the vote to legalize marijuana use.
What do D.C. residents think of Rep. Chaffetz and his meddling?
Maybe Democrats across the country could simply run on the “Jason Chaffetz sucks” platform this 2018 election?