Maine Republican Makes One of the Most Outrageous Excuses for Not Raising the Minimum Wage You'll Ever See

Republicans have never been big fans of raising the minimum wage, but a Maine businessman and GOP office seeker has come up with a novel and bizarre new argument against putting a few more bucks in the pockets of the state's most ill-paid workers: they'll just use the extra buck or two an hour to buy heroin.

The argument came from Rick Snow, who is running for the state House in District 47 and is the former director of the state Bureau of Labor Standards. Snow made his remarks at an Augusta press conference held by the Koch Brothers-affiliated Maine Heritage Policy Center as it launched its campaign against a ballot measure to raise the state's minimum wage from $7.50 to $12 by 2020.

"Where would that money be spent? We’ve heard about the opiate issues in the state of Maine. Are we going to add more income to individuals so they can spend it on illegal activities? I’m very concerned about that," said Snow in remarks reported by the Maine Beacon.

If Snow's comments were a trial balloon for effective themes to use against raising the minimum wage, they instead went over like a lead balloon. Both minimum wage increase supporters and people hurt by the opiate epidemic were incensed.

"Workers in Maine and across the country will use these raises to make ends meet, pay the rent and put food on the table for their families," Ryan Johnson, executive director of The Fairness Project, told The Huffington Post. "Comments like these prove how out of touch these opposition groups are with the rest of America."

Amy Halsted, campaign manager for Mainers for Fair Wages, said Snow's comments were an effort to blame drug use for social ills like single mothers raising their children in poverty and senior citizens who can't afford to retire. They need higher wages not to buy heroin, but to have marginally better lives, she said.

Now, Snow says he doesn't really want to talk about the minimum wage campaign anymore.

"I think this referendum is not something we should be focusing a lot of money and attention toward when we should be focusing on more significant concerns, like the heavy overdoses and the heroin epidemic in our state," he said Friday.

Polling suggests the minimum wage initiative will win in November. If it does, the minimum wage will go up to $9 an hour next year and an additional buck an hour each year until 2020, when it reaches a cap of $12.

Wow. If Maine minimum wage workers get those increases, they'll be able to buy a dime bag's worth of skag for an hour's worth of work by 2018 instead of having to work an hour and a half for it now.