As to the presently pending Final Exit Network trial --- If you live, you have a right to die and it strictly is your own business and neither your red tee shirt wearing neighbors' religious prejudices nor the state's will to legislate and control has any place interfering with such a basic individual liberty. Either there is liberty, or not; Backstrom favoring not.
Your small town DA knows best? Ever a troglodyte; from the final link above this slippery slope drug warrior is locked cryogenically perhaps to the past; to Dick Nixon days. Or what, overly imprinted earlier, in his own youth, by the cinema?
Backstrom, joined by Dakota County Sheriff Dave Bellows, held a forum and a news conference in West St. Paul Nov. 20 to oppose the legalization of marijuana for medical use as a danger to public health and safety.
This link
“Minnesota law enforcement officers and prosecutors have significant empathy for anyone suffering the ill effects of the serious medical diseases and conditions that ‘medical’ marijuana legislation is claimed to be needed for, but we also experience on a daily basis the pain and suffering that is directly and indirectly attributable to the illegal cultivation, distribution and possession of marijuana,” Backstrom said.
“The simple fact of the matter is that marijuana is not a medicine,” Backstrom said. “Rather, it is an addictive drug that is the most widely abused controlled substance in our state and nation. [...] “Marijuana is the cash crop for a lot of the gangs that deal in drugs.”
[...] Marijuana is a dangerous drug that is associated with violent crime and impairs driving, Backstrom said. “It is far more powerful today than it was 30 years ago, and it serves as a gateway to the use of other illegal drugs.”
Gateway drug nonsense? What a crock. Why does he not want to pull the money rug out from under the "violent gangs" he alleges he dislikes? Legalize it and the vermin will be replaced by businessmen in business suits just like the ones Backstrom wears. Prohibition proved all that. The man has a flat learning curve. Or other agendas, perhaps wanting to see drug trafficking per normal; i.e., scripted and run by top-government approved and managed channels? He'd know, while we can only speculate from what he says and whether we buy into his brand. If we could lift the guy's rock, what is under it? Does the man own private prison or Big Pharma shares in his retirement portfolio? Mainstream media should ask such specific things. And pressure him for answers. Not settling for the low hanging fruit, and instead going beyond quoting the prepared press releases or speech excerpts for a change.
Question his judgment, if not his motives.
It's fair game. Why, in all aspects, are his feet nailed to an ever weakening, counterproductive, flawed and irrational status quo?
____________UPDATE____________
When has follow-the-money not been a sound approach to understanding politics?
Also, given that pot busts are the low hanging fruit of law enforcement effort, is lassitude a hand maiden to wanting to be able to continue hanging a bunch of pot-bust scalps every so often to the DA-Sheriff fencepoles? It seems to be doing the job justification, the easy way.