Colorado's marijuana dispensaries will be packing up shop if Chris Christie were elected president, the New Jersey governor promised at a New Hampshire town hall meeting on Tuesday.
"If you're getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it," Christie said. "As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws." The recreational use of marijuana is currently legal in Colorado, Washington, D.C., Oregon, Alaska, and Washington state, but, under a Christie presidency, federal laws that criminalize marijuana would be enforced, he says.
Christie is staunchly opposed to marijuana, which he believes "alters the brain and serves as a so-called gateway to the use of harder drugs," Bloomberg reports. In his opinion, if marijuana is going to be legalized, it should be changed at the national level, rather than perpetuating "lawlessness" by allowing elected officials to pick and choose which federal statutes they abide by.
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Christie's opinions on pot don't exactly fall in line with that of most Americans, however. A majority of Americans support the legalization of marijuana, with 53 percent in favor and 44 percent opposed, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found. Moreover, marijuana legalization is dominating the national conversation in ways that might make Christie want to reconsider his stance. At this point in the presidential elections, as The Week previously reported, marijuana is "more popular than any presidential candidate in national match-up polls," and over 20 marijuana ballot initiatives are already slated for 2016.
