Dilbert creator: 'Political' marijuana raids are a 'firing offense' for Obama

The creator of the comic strip "Dilbert" has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, citing President Barack Obama's relentless pursuit of medical marijuana retailers as "political," which he perceives to be a "firing offense."

Even though Romney has consistently made it clear that he would be every bit as tough on medical marijuana, Scott Adams says he wagers otherwise. "Romney is likely to continue the same drug policies as the Obama administration," he wrote in a highly cited post on his website. "But he's enough of a chameleon and a pragmatist that one can't be sure. And I'm fairly certain he'd want a second term. He might find it 'economical' to use federal resources in other ways than attacking California voters."

Adams specifically cited the case of Aaron Sandusky, a California medical marijuana storefront owner whose collective operated legally under state law but ran afoul of federal prosecutors. Sandusky was convicted on October 12 and faces upwards of 10 years in prison after a planned sentencing hearing in January.

He's just one example, too: as Marijuana Policy Project director Rob Kampia told Raw Story in April, "Obama is worse than Bush" when it comes to medical marijuana prosecutions, and his attorneys have knocked over and prosecuted hundreds of storefronts that claimed they were operating legally under state law. All that enforcement has even triggered rebukes by some of the president's allies like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who's said she has "strong concerns" about recent actions.

"They strategically hit people that I believe are high profile cases that they get the most bang for their buck," Sandusky told Reason magazine, in a short documentary film (embedded below) published to YouTube and linked to by Adams. "...We had 50 full time, W2 employees that, in one day, everybody lost their job, had to file for unemployment and lost their medical benefits. Fifty employees being put on unemployment was a $70,000 obligation now put on the state for no other reason than local officials requesting this kind of action from the federal government."

Adams continued: "Personally, I'd prefer death to spending the final decades of my life in prison. So while President Obama didn't technically kill a citizen, he is certainly ruining this fellow's life, and his family's lives, and the lives of countless other minor drug offenders. And he is doing it to advance his career. If that's not a firing offense, what the hell is?"

Adams concluded that he doesn't agree with Romney on pretty much anything, but he's endorsing him anyway. "I think we need to set a minimum standard for presidential behavior, and jailing American citizens for political gain simply has to be a firing offense no matter how awesome you might be in other ways."

The Obama administration says it is "interested" in the potential medical uses for marijuana, but it has consistently defended the drug's Schedule I classification under federal law, which asserts that marijuana has no medical uses. In spite of this, the Medical Marijuana Chamber of Commerce endorsed Obama in August, saying that Obama understands that the industry must be pruned and made more professional and transparent before the feds will acknowledge it as legitimate business.

As for Adam's assertion that he and Romney don't ever-ever see eye-to-eye in spite of the endorsement, he might not have considered Romney's double-take on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Romney either supports or opposes or has no opinion on depending upon which campaign aide is being asked. In a post last year that Adams ultimately deleted, he compared women asking for equal pay to children wanting candy for dinner -- which, he said, you just don't argue with. So, maybe there's hope for an agreement between Adams and the candidate after all.

This video is from Reason magazine, published August 13, 2012.

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Photo: Flickr user Ol.v!er [H2vPk], creative commons licensed.