Editor's Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
If anyone could use a gigantic bong rip, it's Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Needless to say, Paxton's had a rough few years. First, he was picked up on felony securities fraud charges, and that case is continuing to play out in a prolonged court battle. Then, in late 2020, former staffers accused him of bribery and reported the matter to the FBI. By all indications, he's still under investigation. And last May, nearly three-quarters of the members of his own party voted to impeach him in the House, before the Senate spared him removal from office. Even Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn mocked him earlier this month, tweeting, "Ken, your criminal defense lawyers are calling."
But if you thought Paxton's ongoing legal travails would compel him to lay low, you're sorely mistaken. The man refuses to admit disgrace. Not satisfied with incessantly suing the Biden administration — and losing repeatedly despite the most conservative judiciary in 100 years — he's now suing Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin and Denton for their efforts to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis.
"I will not stand idly by as cities run by pro-crime extremists deliberately violate Texas law and promote the use of illicit drugs that harm our communities," Paxton said in a press statement late last month, when he filed the suit. "We don't allow cities the ability to create anarchy by picking and choosing the laws they enforce."
Dude, chill out. With finite resources at their disposal, municipalities must decide where to devote the attention of law enforcement. Should they focus on murderers and thieves or go after someone wearing a Keep Austin Weird T-shirt and smoking a joint in the privacy of their own home?
The president of the Austin Police Association, Michael Bullock, told Austin's KUT News that pot charges aren't worth the paperwork.
"If low levels of marijuana were to be decriminalized in some cases, it would make our job easier," he explained.
Even fiscal conservatives, if such a creature still exists in the wild, have to acknowledge that we're leaving hundreds of million of dollars in government revenue on the table by not legalizing weed. That's money that could go to property tax relief, public schools and environmental cleanup, not to mention the kinds of urban renewal that address the root causes of crime.
Meanwhile, in a single year, Houston's Harris County wasted $26 million prosecuting and jailing low-level marijuana offenders, according to its district attorney's office. That includes costs incurred from paying public defenders and running lab analysis. Does anyone seriously contend that's money well spent?
"The Republican drive to centralize power in Austin represents a marked departure from the traditional conservative principles of local control and limited government," Texas Monthly Senior Editor Michael Hardy wrote last summer.
Hardy quoted a former executive director of the Republican Party of Texas, Wayne Thorburn, who explained that the GOP's new goal is to exploit the levers of state power to impose "cultural values."
"It's totally different from the small-government, free-enterprise conservative values that the party represented 15 years ago," Thorburn said.
Julie Oliver, co-founder of Ground Game Texas, the progressive nonprofit that helped to put marijuana deprioritization measures before voters suggested that Republicans' much-touted opposition to the Nanny State seems selective.
"We shouldn't have Big Government stepping in and saying, 'Oh no, no, you can't do that,'" she told KVUE Austin.
Suing Austin for refraining from cracking down on weed smokers is like suing the state of Wisconsin for not banning cheese. How can those who claim to love Texas display such an active disdain for the people actually living here?
After all, more than 85% of Austin voters approved their ballot measure in 2022. The levels of approval were similar elsewhere: 82% in San Marcos, 75% in Elgin, and a similar petition is currently amassing 20,000 signatures in Dallas.
The Texas House has passed several versions of amnesty for marijuana users, including expunging records from previous convictions, only to watch the bills expire in the state Senate. But the vast majority of U.S. states have long since legalized medicinal marijuana, and almost half permit recreational use as well. A majority of Texans desire the same for our state, according to recent polling, though we remain stuck in a bygone era.
The U.S. Surgeon General estimated that the economic impact of alcohol misuse exceeds $240 billion annually. That includes alcohol-related violence, car crashes, loss of workplace productivity and healthcare costs, and it comes out to about $2 per drink. Yet no politician I'm aware of suggests returning to the failed experiment of Prohibition.
Why a different standard for puffing on the devil's lettuce?
Believing local police shouldn't prioritize locking up cannabis users doesn't make someone a "pro-crime extremist," to quote Paxton. That's not only a bad take, it's pretty rich coming from a man who's allegedly played fast and loose with far weightier laws against corruption and the abuse of authority.
At the federal level, there's an emerging bipartisan consensus led by Democrats including Elizabeth Warren and libertarian Republicans including Rand Paul to at least deschedule marijuana so it's not in the same enforcement category as heroin. But the promise of progress could prove short-lived. Donald Trump, the cameo actor in Home Alone 2 who's now frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has pledged to seek the death penalty for drug dealers.
If your idea of democracy and freedom is revoking the will of an overwhelming majority of local voters and forcing city cops to chase pot smokers and abortion doctors around, you can't credibly claim to be the party of liberty.
And however anti-war right-wing populists present themselves as being nowadays, until we unseat out-of-control GOP officials like Ken Paxton, we will continue to fight and lose the disastrous War on Drugs.
Early voting on primary ballots for Texans began Feb. 20.
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