A Republican member of Congress says that he opposes marijuana legalization, claiming that people who live in states that have enacted the reform have told him it’s “the worst thing they’ve ever seen happen.”
Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) was answering a question from a constituent at town hall meeting on Tuesday who cited his prior opposition to medical marijuana as a Nebraska state lawmaker and asked, “Why do you want medical cannabis patients like myself and so many others in this room to die?”
“This goes without saying, but I do not want you to die,” Flood responded. “I have had a long-held opinion that medical marijuana is the next step to everybody using marijuana.”
“When I, when I talk to people on the East and West Coast, they tell me it’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen happen in their home state,” the GOP congressman claimed.
While he maintains his personal opposition, Flood said he does have a “caveat” to his position.
“We had a vote on that. The people decided to do it. That is the law in Nebraska, and it has to be followed,” he said, referring to voters’ approval of a pair of medical cannabis legalization ballot initiatives in 2024. “I disagree with the issue, but the voters voted, and they have voted to approve it.”
Still, the lawmaker said he hopes that “someday we see the right thing and maybe reverse course.”
“I have met a lot of people that have moved into this district from states like Colorado, because their schools, their communities, their police—they are hurting in places that have expanded marijuana use,” he said.
At a separate recent town hall meeting, Flood told another constituent that “weed is not medicine.”
“We will regret that vote. We will regret that decision,” he said. “This is not going to be good for children and generations of children…but it is the law, so it should be enforced.”
Despite Flood’s articulation of respect for the will of the electorate, state officials in Nebraska have slowed implementation and sought to scale back the scope of the voter-approved reforms.
And until recently, the state was left out of the scope of longstanding federal legislation that protects state medical cannabis laws from federal interference.
Flood, for his part, signed onto a letter late last year urging President Donald Trump not to federally reschedule marijuana.
Crista Eggers, the executive director of Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, confronted Flood after this week’s town hall, asking, “Are you going to continue opposing it as you did with a letter in December of last year to oppose the federal rescheduling that has now happened?”
“If the voters want something that I disagree with, they choose to do it. It should be carried out the way that it was supposed to be carried out without undue delay,” Flood said, according to Nebraska Public Media. “I am going to do nothing on the state level, because it is the law of the land in the state of Nebraska. I am not going to use my advocacy efforts to help reclassify marijuana at the federal level,”
Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
