Pumping cannabis

It’s no secret Governor Lovey Dovey’s mucho manliness (no, not down there, silly) pours out of his pores like bacon grease out of a Teamster whenever he takes decisive stands on cannabis. It all goes back to swingin’ ’77, when the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron chronicled meiner liebekind’s defense of his Mr. Olympia sash. One famous scene shows Puff the Magic Austrian taking a hit off a joint. Just in case anyone thought it was tobacco, a camera trick or someone duped him, Herr Schwarzy gave an interview that same year with the now-defunct pornographic magazine Oui in which he admitted not only to smoking herb, but enjoying it! And when the 25th anniversary edition of Pumping Iron was re-released on DVD, my man revealed he encouraged the director to preserve his artistic vision by keeping in the marijuana-smoking scene—even at the risk of our future governor’s then-budding political career.

With that kind of attitude toward the devil’s weed, it’s small wonder that as Schwarzensweetknees campaigned for governor in 2003, he announced that—like the majority of Californians—he supported the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes.

So naturally, when the Proposition 215-opposing federal government has sent agents to the Golden Herb State to arrest terminally ill people relieving their pain with California-legal cannabis, now-Governor Arnie has boldly looked the other way. And when bills have easily passed both state houses allowing the cultivation of industrial hemp, he has intrepidly vetoed them. When asked about these quick-trigger actions, he shrugs those bulging shoulders and says decisively, “Hey, federal law trumps Callyfoneeyuh law.”

So naturally, when upon his desk landed a California Medical Association and California Nurses Association-supported bill—passed by both houses in ’04—to remove quantity limits on medical-marijuana patients, he bravely vetoed it. And when the next year a medical-marijuana ID program was about to be taken statewide after a successful four-county tryout, he valiantly yanked it. When asked about these quick-trigger actions, he shrugged those bulging shoulders and said decisively, “Hey, federal law trumps Callyfoneeyuh law.”

I don’t recall whose law was trumped when he reinstated the ID program after the ACLU and Drug Policy Alliance threatened to sue him. The point is Govey Dovey’s hands are tied by federal law having more power than state law—except when he’s running for re-election and he maintains California law trumps U.S. law when it comes to his refusal to send the California National Guard to Iraq and the border. These swift stands probably won him swing votes from on-the-fence liberals and moderates.

Now that pot growers and dealers have offered to give my snookums $1 billion to wipe out our sorry state’s $700 million budget gap in exchange for marijuana being legalized and heavily taxed, Pumpems has rightly characterized this as the nuttiest thing to come down the pike since that constitutional amendment that prevents a fearless foreign-born hunk from becoming U.S. president. Swatting it aside like it was his personal-assistant bitch’s plump ass, he unilaterally declared that his administration will not respond to publicity stunts … although he of course reserves his right to engineer his own publicity stunts when it comes to ballot initiatives, re-election campaigns and Planet Hollywood grand re-openings.