Jasmine Crockett and Cannabis

While most Democrats are wringing their hands over the Trump/Musk takeover of our democracy, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas has been telling it like it is. PBS's Evan Smith introduced her as someone who has "emerged as the raised voice and clenched fist" against Trump/Musk in an "Overhead" interview a few days ago.  Asked by Smith about her fellow Democrats' response to Trump, she said, "Resistance means different things to different members of the caucus. For me, it's to get a little rowdy."

The NRCC has homed in on Crockett, after she spoke at the Democratic National Convention last August, when she praised Kamala Harris for holding police to account over the death of Brianna Taylor in a botched drug raid. 

Now I see under the headline, "How a marijuana case fuelled Jasmine Crockett's rise to presidential critic" that during her time as a public defender, "a black juvenile caught with a brownie laced with marijuana in small towns was granted a mandatory felony conviction." Reportedly, Crockett refused to accept a plea bargain for a 17-year-old black client being tried as an adult as an accomplice to murder. Facing 47 years in prison, he was offered 10 years instead for pleading guilty to a drug possession charge. Crockett maintained there was no evidence for her client's crime and got the case dismissed. 

In 2021, Crockett filed House Bill 1233, to make it easier to prescribe low-THC cannabis under the Texas Compassionate Use Program. “What’s a medical refugee? One of the countless folks leaving Texas for a state with medical marijuana so they can receive the lifesaving treatments they need. We can not let stigma and politics interfere with medicine and evidence-based treatments. That’s why I filed HB 1233,” Crockett wrote in a series of tweets on 4/20. “Doctors know what’s best for their patients — not the government. HB 1233 gives physicians full discretion over medical cannabis treatments including the dosage, potency and route of administration. Medical marijuana isn’t just used to treat uncomfortable conditions — physicians rely on this to treat deadly ailments and see great results not achieved through traditional pharmaceuticals.”

Crockett shot back at Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting she couldn't read a bill through her false eyelashes last May in a committee hearing, and Nancy Mace suggested they take their differences outside in January after Crockett accused her of beating the anti-trans drum to fill her campaign coffers. At the lie-riddled State of the Union speech from Trump, she said what we were all thinking: “Somebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I’m ready to get on with it.” Just a few days earlier, when asked of her message to Elon Musk, she told him to “Fuck off.” 

She told Smith that she and others got called into an office for a reprimand afterwards, but stood her ground. Acknowledging that coming from a "safe" Democratic district she feels more free to speak out, "If there are people who can punch, and are willing to punch, they should be allowed to punch," she said, adding that she loved what Al Greene did at the SOTU. Regarding legislative and press intimidation, she opined that everyone should stand together, saying, "When they kicked AP out [for refusing to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico], everyone else should have left." 

Crockett backs up her punches with facts, like when she got a witness in a hearing to say that Trump's name was mentioned 312 times in the Project 2025 document he claimed to know nothing about. And she was great educating her fellow representatives about white men daring to call themselves oppressed last November. 

Crockett has an A+ rating from NORML, based on her voting record. In 2022, she participated in a Texas town hall as part of the Cannabis Caucus. The child of a preacher, Crockett is taking her righteous show on the road, going into Republican districts for town halls across the country.