'I’m fighting for our right to consume marijuana at will,' he said. Candidate: I'll smoke a joint on Hill

Andy Caffrey, a candidate for Congress in California, has made a rather unusual campaign promise: If he wins, he’ll smoke a joint — right on the steps of Capitol Hill.

The 54-year-old is running on a seven-step platform that prioritizes battling the climate crisis, but the casual manner in which puffs pot on the campaign trail — including twice just last week — is what has captivated local media covering the Second Congressional District House race. And Caffrey admits that this is precisely what he’s aiming for.


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“I’m willing to get arrested to fight for our rights, to defend our rights as Californians to consume medicine,” Caffrey, a registered Democrat, said in an interview. “If I have to do it, I’ll smoke a joint on the Capitol steps and get arrested to draw national attention to what’s going on.”

Although he doesn’t smoke every day, Caffrey says he’s been smoking cannabis with a doctor’s approval for about six or seven years, and always carries a physician’s note in case he’s questioned by law enforcement officials. He supports the legalization of medical marijuana on a national level, although he insists that he’s “not a crusader that everyone should get high.”

( PHOTOS: 9 politicians who talked pot)

“I’m fighting for our right to consume marijuana at will without any criminal penalties,” said Caffrey, who was featured recently in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Just don’t say I’m advocating for children to use it.”

Caffrey, who is single and lives alone in an apartment in Garberville, Humboldt County, says marijuana helps him deal with attention deficit disorder and complex posttraumatic stress disorder — which resulted, he says, from a list of traumas including his sister’s suicide and having been homeless for five years.

“I have a lot of talents — I do Internet work, I do video, I’m making my own television commercials for my congressional campaign — sometimes I just have so many things going on and I get very anxious that I’m not as focused as I should be,” he said. “So it’s more of a focusing agent, I guess you can say, and you can call it sort of an anti-depressant.”

There are 11 other candidates in the congressional race.