Chelsea Clinton: Marijuana Can Kill

In a campaign appearance Saturday in Youngstown, Ohio Chelsea Clinton suggested that marijuana has the ability to kill.

During her speech, Clinton said, “We also have anecdotal now from Colorado, where some of the people who were taking marijuana for those purposes, the coroner believed after they died that there were drug interactions with other things they were taking.”

One of the most progressive rulings in the past ten years has been the legalization of marijuana that is now sweeping the nation. What started in states like Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and the District of Columbia has now exploded across the country. Nine states will decide in November if they will join the growing list of states that have legalized marijuana.

Colorado, in particular, has seen many benefits since the legalization of marijuana. According to the Boston Globe, “Legalization has ushered in thousands of new jobs in the burgeoning industry, brought $135 million into state coffers last year, and ended the prohibition of a widely used substance.”

The state has also seen a drop in highway deaths as well as a drop in overdose death of harder illegal drugs such as heroin. The DEA acknowledges that there has never been a reported death from an overdose of marijuana. According to the Washington Post, “On its own, marijuana is not known to have any fatal dosage level. The DEA itself acknowledges that nobody has ever died from marijuana alone.”

A Breitbart/ Gravis poll released late last week shows “In Colorado, a swing state with nine electoral votes, Trump leads Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton by four points—outside the survey’s 3.5 percent margin of error. Trump, at 41 percent, leads Clinton—who has just 37 percent. Libertarian Gary Johnson takes six percent and Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party takes six percent, and 10 percent of the voters polled are undecided. The poll, conducted from Sept. 22 to Sept. 23, surveyed 799 registered voters in Colorado.”

As Trump surges in the all-important battleground state of Colorado, Clinton’s comments could hinder her mother’s ability to reach out to a large group of voters who support the legalization of the same “drug” that Clinton lied about. The most current Colorado poll shows Trump and Clinton in a dead heat. Only one point separates the two candidates. According to a CNN/ORC poll, “In Colorado, likely voters break 42% for Trump, 41% for Clinton, 13% for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 3% for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.”

In a statement to the Washington Post Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Clinton stated, “While discussing her [Chealsea Clinton] and her mother’s support for rescheduling marijuana to allow for further study of both its medical benefits and possible interactions with other medications, Chelsea misspoke about marijuana’s interaction with other drugs contributing to specific deaths.” She went on to say, “Hillary Clinton has said we should allow states that have reformed their marijuana laws to act as laboratories for our democracy and we should reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II substance.”