Awaiting sentencing for concealing payments received for helping Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, former State Senator Kent Sorenson has now tested positive three times for marijuana use, the Associated Press reported last week. Sorenson’s attorney had said the first positive test was caused by drug use prior to the plea agreement. In a more recent court document,

A lab toxicologist gave an opinion on Oct. 28 that Sorenson “reused marijuana prior to the collections on Oct. 7 and Oct. 21,” which would amount to a second violation of his release conditions, she wrote.

I’d like to hear from members of the Bleeding Heartland community who are familiar with the criminal justice system: would evidence of more recent marijuana use likely affect the sentence Sorenson will receive, even though the crimes to which he pled guilty are unrelated to illegal drug use?

Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu reflected on Sorenson’s “perfect hypocrisy,” since as a state senator he “voted to subject welfare recipients to random drug tests, at their own expense, even if they had no history of drug abuse.” I’ve enclosed excerpts from her latest piece after the jump.

Various states that have introduced drug testing for welfare recipients have found the tests “ended up costing taxpayers more than it saved and failed to curb the number of prospective applicants,” and that welfare recipients use illegal drugs at rates significantly lower than the general population.  

Excerpts from Rekha Basu’s column in the Sunday Des Moines Register of November 16:

He was arrested for selling marijuana as a result of an undercover sting back in 1993. He pleaded guilty to drug delivery and was ordered to serve six months in the Warren County Jail. But he only had to serve five days. He paid a $300 fine and was on probation for two years. Even so, when the press got the story in 2010 while Sorenson was a state representative seeking election to the Senate, he denied having dealt drugs and blamed the person he was with. He also said, “At that point in my life, I was a different person.” He went on to win the election.

Maybe he was a different person, and maybe he just got yanked back into using after his current legal troubles began. If he lived in Colorado, it might not even be an issue, and some would say it shouldn’t be one here. But if Sorenson does believe in recreational marijuana use, he was in a unique position as a lawmaker to do something about changing Iowa law.

Instead he sought to villanize poor people over something he himself did. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me.

If Sorenson has a bona fide problem with drugs, he deserves help and understanding, but that would require owning up to it and accepting responsibility. It would also be nice to see him drop the double-standard and extend to other people the same leeway he gives himself. Yet even when Democratic Sens. Joe Bolkcom and Jack Hatch were hoping to introduce a bill legalizing medical marijuana to ease the pain or symptoms of sick people, Sorenson chose to stick with the conservatives in his party. The bill got no Republican support and was never brought to a vote.

Note: the Iowa legislature passed a limited medical marijuana bill this year, after Sorenson had resigned his office because of his alleged violations of Iowa Senate ethics rules and federal campaign finance laws.