Dope calls for legal dope.

"Where's Joel Ford?", absolutely no one has asked since he waddled up to save the state of North Carolina from HB2 a coupla weeks ago.

That's because his claim to fame was Macbeth recast as farce:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

His bill vanished without a trace, and the briefly-deflated Ford, now reflated, has a new Big Idea: medical marijuana. His SB 579 is a last-minute, before-deadline attempt to find a new cause to follow along behind.

So far the only press Ford's Cheech & Chong bill has gotten is from the Charlotte NORML chapter's newsletter.

 

Ford, who is running for mayor of Charlotte after two largely invisible terms in the Senate,, tried to break the HB2 deadlock in an original way. The Charlotte Observer reported,

Ford’s bill is essentially the same as a proposal made in December by Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, an Eden Republican. That failed when 16 Senate Republicans joined Ford and other Democrats in defeating it.

Nothing says "I'm a doofus" quite like announcing the solution to an impasse is an old solution to the impasse that you yourself voted against just three months before, but my state senator's approach to legislation has been much like his private sector career: waste management.

Ford, who is running for mayor of Charlotte after two largely invisible terms in the Senate tried to break the HB2 deadlock in an original way. The Charlotte Observer reported,

Then Ford picked a fight with Governor Roy Cooper, claiming Cooper was signed on with Ford's POS. As if. Cooper was locked in a room with Senate boss Phil Berger and his poodle, House Speaker Tim Moore, to shovel a dazzling, leadership-designed pile of the stuff out to Berger & Moore's geldings and a rump of Democrats desperate to claim they had played some role in something pro-business.

And pro-business is all HB 146, Son of HB2, turned out to be.

Ford was not at the table. So much for his Big Idea to differentiate himself from Vi Lyles- the Charlotte City Council president pro tem, who is also a longtime GOP collaborationist to get a money-driven solution to HB2. Both are opposing first term mayor Jennifer Roberts, who has proved remarkably inept in a part-time job but has at least studied, and listened, when it comes to LGBT issues (Ford, when a gay reporter challenged his tepid and shallow record, tweeted a GIF of a dog pooping; then, when he went after Cooper, he claimed the governor abandoned Ford's bill after blandishments by Equality NC, the LGBT lobby group. Cooper showed Ford up as a dumbass on that claim with a vengeance).