I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, a tea party favorite and possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, told The Weekly Standard that he smoked marijuana for medicinal purposes from 2005 to 2008 following a paragliding accident in Hawaii. Johnson has long advocated from legalizing marijuana but has said in the past that he supports it despite no longer smoking marijuana (or drinking alcohol) himself.
“Rather than using painkillers, which I have used on occasion before, I did smoke pot, as a result of having broken my back, blowing out both of my knees, breaking ribs, really taking about three years to recover,” Johnson told The Weekly Standard.
In the past, Johnson has said that he does not smoke marijuana because it is “a handicap.”
“I don’t smoke marijuana anymore. I don’t drink. Marijuana is a handicap. So is alcohol,” Johnson told Reason magazine nearly 10 years ago, well before the time he says he began smoking marijuana again. “Alcohol is a terrible handicap. But in spite of being a handicap, it shouldn’t be criminal.”
Johnson is currently the Honorary Chairman of the Our America Initiative, a nonprofit.
The Our America Initiative stance on marijuana is that, “Marijuana should be regulated and taxed by the federal government (just like tobacco is currently), which would lead to a lower price for the product and eliminate the criminal element from its distribution, much like the repeal of the prohibition of alcohol many decades back.”
Johnson called for legalizing marijuana earlier this year and supported an unsuccessful ballot initiative in California that would have legalized marijuana for recreational use.
