A version of the following letter was sent to us after its first draft was sent to Governor Dayton of Minnesota. It is as applicable as precautionary tale for Florida, Alaska, and any other state considering legalization of marijuana in any form.
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Dear Governor Dayton — The marijuana backlash is coming. Don’t get caught on the wrong side of history.
Teen Marijuana use highest in “medical” marijuana states. (Click to enlarge or download the .pdf)
Medical marijuana states have the highest rates of youth use in the nation. As marijuana availability increases, and perception of harm decreases, more kids use.
The reality is that 95% of users who frequent “medical” marijuana stores are simply drug-seeking individuals with vague unverifiable symptoms of “pain”, or “intractable pain”, or “chronic pain”. The amount allowed per patient is more than can possible be personally consumed. The rest is diverted — often to youth.
We end up with a large illicit supply and rising youth use rates.
“The newest “cause” behind the current narcotic epidemic is being laid at the feet of doctors who are being told they over-prescribe opiate pain killers. Now, I am asked to be the gatekeeper for a mood- and mind-altering drug that has both recreational and (presumed) medical use.”
Hooray for Alan Berkenwald, M.D., who practices in Northampton, MA.
We need more bold medical professionals willing to speak out about the realities of these laws. What actually happens when medical issues are put to popular vote? We are boxed in by laws that were written to deceive the people, after outside funders paid over $1 million to promote their position and their product through sly — yet effective — propaganda to an unsuspecting public. No mention of risks or harms associated with using this drug. That is clearly not medicine.
Over 90% of the families of young opiate/heroin addicts that we’ve spoken to this year say that their children started with marijuana — a practical finding that bares out the science on how, far too often, the brain becomes primed for progressive addiction.
Colorado: This is your state’s new tourism image. Yes, that’s pot smoke over Boulder. Cool huh? Why would anyone choose to ski here?Families taking their ski business to non-marijuana states.
When you’ve taken the policy decision to trade wholesome outdoor recreation for clouds of pot smoke as your state’s tourism image, you are bound to have some blowback.
This letter came to us from a family whose ties to Colorado are deep but who have decided to take their ski-vacations elsewhere.
They asked to remain anonymous as the nastiness of the pot lobby and its army of online Trolls is abusive. They asked to be spared exposure to this bullying.
RJ Reynolds, 1946 Ads like this regularly appeared in publications like the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Click image to enlarge).Reminiscent of the heyday of Big Tobacco, Gupta’s position on marijuana and image is being co-opted to lend credibility to the marijuana industry.
Big Tobacco used doctors for years to convince us that cigarettes were okay. They even had campaigns pitching the health benefits of smoking cigarettes.
Tobacco companies used nurses, as well as doctors, to brainwash unsuspecting generations into smoking. Marijuana is using the same playbook. (Click images to enlarge).Not as demure as days gone buy, and updated to our digital and racier present, the “Nurse Tactic” of Big Tobacco is being used today to dupe us into thinking that smoking weed is okay.
When you keep lifting the lid a little more on the methods and intentions of the marijuana industry, the parallels to the duping of America and the world by the tobacco industry become so blatantly obvious that it would be laughable if it wasn’t tragic.
As states, like Kentucky, catch onto the farce that is the medical benefits of smoked marijuana, and build laws for use around just the non-high-inducing cannabidiol part of marijuana, the pot legalization proponents get all upset.
The role of the Doctor in promoting tobacco and marijuana legalization has been thoroughly exploited. And with the doctor, of course, comes the nurse.
There is a lot of new evidence about the health impacts of high potency 21st Century marijuana. But the rise in its use among young people is perhaps the most problematic.
Student debt had risen dramatically in the past decade, so making the most of that very expensive education is more critical than ever. That makes the following news even more compelling.
Pot has a serious negative impact on the return on investment of those education dollars.
Marijuana diversion and trafficking are among the eight listed violations that the Justice Department say they’ll enforce. Apparently this is no deterrent to pot dealers.
It is one thing to have our neighboring states create marijuana chaos for themselves, but exporting it over the border to states that have the good sense not to surrender to the drug culture is despicable. Law enforcement, drug education and prevention people, and government officials take note.
Here are two articles that were published recently. This information should be very disturbing to anyone in our states who cares about marijuana and substance abuse.
AG Holder recently unveiled a list of eight marijuana violations the Justice Department will enforce. They include:
The distribution of marijuana to minors.
Directing revenue from marijuana sales to gangs and cartels.
Diverting marijuana from states where it is legal to other states where there are no laws allowing for marijuana use.
Using legal sales as cover for trafficking operations.
Using violence and or firearms in marijuana cultivation and distribution.
Driving under the influence of marijuana.
Growing marijuana on public lands.
Possessing marijuana or using on federal property.
The intent of the following “entrepreneurs” is clearly diversion and trafficking. They will join other traffickers in Colorado with similar plans for Oklahoma. Your state next.
Are these the “patients” Sanjay Gupta will help with his “non-science, non-evidence-based suggestion that vaping may be the way to consume weed? Source: Reuters/Kimberly White
Since CNN sensationalized his “Weed” reports, Sanjay Guptas has continued to erode his own credibility, for example, in his statements about vaporizing marijuana.
The biggest concern about Dr. Gupta is his relationship with science-based medicine. Being a medical correspondent is a tough job to have and still stay true to science and evidence-based medicine. The temptation to “sex up a story” or to do credulous puff pieces about the latest “alternative” medicine in order to drive ratings is strong, and it takes a strong commitment to be able to resist them.
It seems that Gupta’s weaknesses as a science-based or evidence-based professional were known even as he was being considered for surgeon general in 2009 (see article below). He didn’t make the cut then.
His carelessness in promoting marijuana to his broad TV public with no regard for the impact on public health and increasing abuse of marijuana bares out that skepticism about his professional judgement. Continue reading First, Do No Harm — Gupta, Weed, Ethics, & Science
The pristine clouds and a Rocky Mountain high have been emasculated by marijuana smoke and drug-induced high. The wholesome image portrayed by Colorado’s tourism board is upstaged on 4/20 by pot activists.Scenes like this were the face of Denver and Colorado amid this past weekend’s 4/20 pot celebrations. What might your State’s tourism image look like under legalized marijuana?
Colorado’s wholesome image of fresh air and exercise, hiking and beautiful scenery gave way again this April to a haze of pot smoke while police largely ignored enforcement of the “no public consumption provisions” of the amendment that legalized marijuana in the state.
Meanwhile, a backlash from local and national groups makes headlines as they give Colorado poor marks in first annual 4-20 Report Card.
Regardless of the marijuana industry propaganda, weed is addictive and it does lead you to other drugs.
Is marijuana addictive? Yes. Period.
And the marijuana industry, like the tobacco industry, is counting on it.
Organizations like Marijuana Anonymous are founded for a reason.
They are founded to address a need. The need is coping with and recovering from marijuana addiction, also referred to as marijuana dependence syndrome.
Marijuana legalization means commercialization, which means more potent pot, more pro-pot marketing, more youth exposures, more public health fallout, and yet another vice-based industry preying on vulnerable populations.
80% of their profit comes from the 20% of their customers who are chronic users. And the youth market is the target market for building a life-long customer base.
See the video and read the interview with a thoughtful young man coming of age as a new father, and coming to terms with his own father’s legacy as a major drug dealer.
“To open Pandora’s box” means to perform an action that may seem small or innocent, but that turns out to have severely detrimental and far-reaching consequences. [1]
The recent death of a student who jumped to his death in Colorado after ingesting a marijuana cookie is waking many up to what is really being unleashed in the misguided pursuit of marijuana legalization.
Many of her statements reflect the narrative of those who are looking beyond civil liberties, beyond nostalgia, beyond the false dichotomies of justifying another addiction-based vice industry with the evils of two others — tobacco and alcohol — to the downstream realities of legalized marijuana.
“The case has become a grim exhibit in a growing case file as Colorado health officials wonder whether, in the rapid rollout of legalized marijuana, adequate attention was paid to potential health risks of its use”
In addition to his legitimate and well-earned bone fides as a senior writer for NBC News and Newsweek and The Daily Beast before that, Tony Dokoupil comes at the marijuana legalization issue from an interesting perspective. As the son of a notorious marijuana dealer and folk hero, Dokoupil is quoted from his memoirThe Last Pirate–A Father, His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana as saying, “My father went to jail for dealing weed and, to my surprise, I would keep him there.”
“If we really mean to sell marijuana like alcohol, then we mean to create a market where most of the revenue comes from people who have a problem.
That is the business model of alcohol. Eighty percent of the revenues comes from a tiny sliver of the users. It’s not the guy who has a drink after work. It’s the guy who has six and misses his kid’s bedtime, his marriage is in shambles. That’s the kind of guy who supports the industry.”
In a most eloquent, most thorough, most thoughtful consideration of the issue, David Frum provides the case against marijuana legalization.
“Today, the experiment of state-by-state marijuana legalization is failing before our eyes—and failing most signally where the experiment has been tried most boldly. The failure is accelerating even as the forces pushing legalization are on what appears to be an inexorable march.”
Ed Wood is among many who are waking up to the manipulations and outright lies of Big Marijuana. In his letter to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Wood writes:
________________ Pot Taxes May Help State Income, but Problems Remain
Regulation does not keep pot out of the hands (and bodies) of youth whose brains, still being in the formative stages, are most susceptible to permanent harm. Continue reading Outright Lies from “Big Marijuana”
Is the leadership of the left waking up? It appears so. And about time too.
Just weeks after President Obama spoke in opposition to legalization, former President, Jimmy Carter, announced his opposition to marijuana legalization and support of Project SAM (Smart approaches to Marijuana) a bi-partisan organization seeking to change the conversation about marijuana.
Maybe we can learn something from those going before us–if we can get anybody to listen.
Massachusetts, and all the other states before it, are going down the path towards legalization of marijuana. It starts, as it has in the UK, with “decriminalization” and moves through the next two steps in the Big Marijuana playbook–medicinalization, and then full legalization.
The British commentator and author, Peter Hitchins has seen the Big Marijuana movement for what it really is–snake-oil sold by charlatans at best, the next Big Tobacco at worst.
“It is amazing how many otherwise sensible people have already been fooled into accepting the dud arguments for relaxing the law against cannabis, one of the most dangerous drugs in existence.”
Those that have succumbed to the decades long indoctrination of the Cannabis Cult love to spout the notion that drugged driving on marijuana has not led many car accidents at all, let alone life-threatening ones. They go so far as to say that marijuana mellows you out and, if anything, makes you drive slower and therefore more carefully. Here’s a very typical comment that might show up on any story on drugged driving:
“pot heads have been driving our roads since it became widely used in the 60’s. this is nothing new. you don’t hear of many wrecks from pot.”
Well tell that to the friend of a stoned driver in Halifax, MA who is still on life support…here’s the story from CBS:
In the draft DPH marijuana regulations a “verified financial hardship” definition includes any individual on MassHealth, or Supplemental Security Income, or with an income not exceeding 133% of federal poverty level.
This group, with a willing doctor’s signature on a marijuana recommendation, and a note saying they cannot find their own way to a “Medical Marijuana Treatment Center” can get a registration to grow marijuana at home or have a “caregiver” grow it for them.
In November of 2012, the Small Property Owners Association foresaw the problems with the proposed Massachusetts “medical” marijuana laws. Now with draft regulations offered up for comment by the Massachusetts DPH, the SPOA is weighing in. “The DPH has met 20 different groups privately. Why not landlords?,” they ask in a letter to MA DPH.
“Under federal law, property owners are liable for fines, imprisonment, and “civil asset forfeiture” of their property to the federal government if they are knowingly involved in the use or growing of marijuana or their property is so involved. In other words, we are being asked – or told – to risk our property and serious penalties due to marijuana use or growing operations in our apartments.”
Michigan in 2010, Oregon in 2013. Search warrant demand of ‘medical’ marijuana patient records shows that Federal DEA is far from giving up on Controlled Substances Act enforcement.
This activity should send chills up the spines of the legislators considering joining in the “medical” marijuana fray, as well as the administrators of the health departments who are facilitating drug traffickers. Continue reading Feds demand marijuana ‘patient’ records in MI, OR
If there were any doubt that behind the guise of medicine there lurks an industry as cynical as Big Tobacco, just watch the “medical” marijuana program unfurl in Massachusetts. Like in the 17 states before it, the fox is is in the hen house writing the rules that will lead to abuse while enabling Big Marijuana.
“Is there a familiar aroma emanating from your kid’s room? Do you shake your head and ignore it thinking, “Hey, I got high when I was a teen and I turned out OK, right?” Well, think again.”
The research on 21st Century Pot and its health effects is pouring in, and the news is not good.
A generation of susceptible youth may be transformed and derailed by the drug’s consequences: addiction, IQ reduction, psychosis, cognitive impairment, educational underachievement. They will have no legal recourse with the perpetrators of this human biological experiment, as do participants in a clinical trial.
The United States is on the threshold of yet another national experiment, a human experiment that tests the health and safety of yet another drug, this time marijuana.
“a generation of susceptible youth may be transformed and derailed by the drug’s consequences: addiction, IQ reduction, psychosis, cognitive impairment, educational underachievement.”
Eric Holder, US Attorney General, has promised this week to issue soon an opinion from the Justice Department on its response to the Colorado and Washington State ballot initiative-based laws legalizing marijuana. Because of those state laws, the U.S. is currently in violation of several international drug control treaties.
Background: The marijuana lobby, actively pushing its message in Congress and online, has stated its state-by-state strategy for full pot legalization:
Since the 2012 election, national news coverage about marijuana has focused almost solely on the states of Colorado and Washington, creating the impression the country is moving toward legalization. But anti-marijuana forces actually won most of the contests in 2012 and in 2010, and lost only when outspent by large margins.
“As a result of false promises and unheeded warnings, Arizona is now dealing with blatant recreational use and promotion of marijuana, fights to keep dispensaries out of neighborhoods, and costly litigation.”
New Hampshire legislators, are considering a “medical” marijuana bill. The New Hampshire Legislature passed a “medical” marijuana bill during their last session, but it was vetoed by then-Governor Lynch. Their new Governor, Maggie Hassan, is believed to be generally supportive of such a law. A vote in the full New Hampshire House is imminent.
Drug legalization and its corresponding expanded recreational use is a very bad public health and safety policy idea which has been very heavily financed by drug legalization advocates and the cannabis industry.
Pro pot propaganda is becoming tiresome and dated.
By spending millions of dollars, the pro-pot lobby continues to deceive the American public with a crude street drug dressed up as “medicine.” It is time that the Department of Justice put an end to this charade which is causing social, medical, economic, and legal chaos across America and the world.
This excellent article written by former DEA Administrator Robert Bonner should be required reading for politicians and pundits who have abandoned reason in favor of pot propaganda and pot profits.
“Legalization is not far off. Congress is eating out of our hand like pigs at a trough.”
–Marijuana Lobbyist
My parent group just received a copy of a letter in which you state your support for financing marijuana stores.
We know that support for the initiative petition that saddled our state with this new law was based on a plea for compassion for the truly ill.
We now know that 97% of the so called “patients” in California have no serious illness and use pot only to get high.
California communities are trying to shut pot stores because they are a menace to communities. We also know that the newly enriched marijuana lobby is behind all the propaganda suggesting that this is anything other than a march toward full legalization.
On behalf of Health Advocates Rejecting Marijuana (HARM), please support SCR 112. SCR 112 gives the legislature control of medical marijuana and takes out-of-state brokered initiative petition laws off the table as a back door for big pot.
Broken promises from the aggressive marijuana lobby and an increasingly enriched pot industry are the wolf in “compassionate” sheep’s clothing of “medical” marijuana laws and initiative petitions.
74% of children in a Denver youth substance abuse treatment program report getting their pot from a “medical” marijuana cardholder an average of 50 times. (Journal of Child Psychiatry, June 2012, Thurstone) Continue reading Spike in Child Use [Colorado]
“We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, (we’ll do it in at least 20 states this year for chemotherapy patients) we’ll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.”
During this YouTube Q&A, the President responded to a question from a member of LEAP stating that he is not in favor of legalization though he does support addressing drug use as a public health concern, considering drug courts and other alternatives for non-violent drug offenders, reducing demand and getting resources to treatment.
It is encouraging to hear a nuanced, thoughtful, and sensible position from the President and we encourage him to continue to find the courage and fortitude to follow this up with real policy change while putting the brakes on the legalization march at the State level.
