Postal Service nixes newspaper ads for legal weed
In response to a question from Oregon's congressional representatives, the United States Postal Service ruled that it will not deliver newspapers — or indeed any mail — which advertise marijuana.
The decision applies even to states like Oregon, where recreational pot use is now legal, because marijuana is still banned as a Schedule I drug (the most dangerous category) at the federal level, and the USPS is a federal agency.
Oregon's senators and representatives aren't happy with the announcement. "We are working as a delegation to quickly find the best option to address this agency’s intransigence," Sen. Ron Wyden (D) wrote in a statement Thursday with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) and Reps. Suzanne Bonamici (D) and Earl Blumenauer (D). "Unfortunately, the outdated federal approach to marijuana as described in the response from the Postal Service undermines and threatens news publications that choose to accept advertising from legal marijuana businesses in Oregon and other states where voters also have freely decided to legalize marijuana."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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