US Senate Candidate Smokes A Blunt In Campaign Ad: Destigmatize Weed, Highlight Racially-Biased Arrests

Democrat Gary Chambers, who is seeking a U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana, released a campaign ad on Tuesday in which he smokes a sizable blunt while sitting in an armchair looking about as chill as someone could possibly look. “Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana laws than white people,” Chambers says quoting ACLU statistics. Most of the people police are arresting aren’t dealers, but rather people with small amounts of pot, just like me.”The ad is titled “37 Seconds,” a reference to research finding that police make a marijuana-related arrest every 37 seconds on average. Although a sitting member of Congress has never publicly smoked weed, this might be the first time a candidate does so in a campaign ad. After all, support for cannabis legalization and growing disgust over racially-biased marijuana arrests are at an all-time high.