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One
toke over the line
They
can't tell the truth about pot
The assertion that Prop. 19 is
contributing to a rise in teenage marijuana use is unfounded.
California, whose initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use
drew national headlines this year,
is notoriously tolerant of a drug considered an evil weed in some parts
of the country. But is our lax
attitude creating a school system full of Jeff Spicolis, the iconic
California stoner from "Fast Times at
Ridgemont High"? R. Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration's drug
czar, suspects that it is.
Can you imagine anybody more pre-disposed to hate pot
than Obama-the-flip-flopper's Drug Czar?
You can't get appointed Drug Czar if you're honest and intelligent
about drugs.
After an annual survey of teen drug
use nationwide found that marijuana smoking is on the rise among
eighth- through 12th-graders, Kerlikowske attributed the uptick to
California's Proposition 19 and other
states' initiatives to legalize medical marijuana. "Mixed messages
about drug legalization, particularly marijuana,
may be to blame," he said in a news release. "Such messages certainly
don't help parents who are trying to
prevent kids from using drugs."
Bullshit.
Tell your kids the truth about drugs and drug use will fall.
They don't trust their parents because parents lie about drugs.
I guarantee you every kid in school knows a stoner who's getting
straight As.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that he
has a point.
Anecdotal
evidence is horseshit by definition.
In Los Angeles, where billboards
promoting doctors who pass out medical marijuana recommendations
are commonplace and green crosses identifying pot "clinics" can be
found on hundreds of street corners,
cannabis seems as harmless and ubiquitous as nasal spray. It would be
surprising if kids weren't influenced
by adults' blase attitudes about the drug.
You lying sons of bitches are afraid of the truth.
Medicinal pot is in 15 states now.
Why don't you look at the crime rate in those states and see if it went
up or down?
You CAN'T because you're afraid of the results, so you keep on with the
river of lies.
Yet anecdotal evidence is no
substitute for rigorous study, and Kerlikowske should have checked such
sources
as the Congressional Research Service before jumping to conclusions. An
April report, issued to advise Congress
on whether to loosen federal restrictions on medical marijuana,
examined studies comparing teen pot smoking in
states with and without medical marijuana laws and found no connection between such laws
and drug use.
"Concerns that medical cannabis laws send the wrong message to
vulnerable groups such as adolescents seem to be unfounded," it stated.
How dare you
let science and logic into a conversation about drugs?
Nixon ordered a government study on pot forty years ago and his own study
reported,
"The only
difference between pot smokers and non-smokers is their use of pot,"
which means
there were no "dangerous effects" but that's not the answer Nixon
wanted so he killed the report
and poured himself another glass of Jack Daniels.
Too bad Obama's got that same "reefer madness" that
prevents him from being honest about drugs.
Remember when he promised he wasn't like the other politicians?
Most studies on the issue were
performed about a decade ago, and it's clear that more research is
needed
on the effects of legalization debates on teen attitudes. Even if a
causal connection is discovered, though,
it doesn't imply that the solution is to stop discussing legalization —
as evidenced by the same National
Institute on Drug Abuse survey that prompted Kerlikowske's comments.
Clarification: Nobody wants kids smoking pot,
but kids are humans and they like getting high just like adults do.
Even as teen marijuana use is
rising, tobacco and alcohol use is falling, according to the report,
which found that 21.4% of high school seniors had smoked pot in the
previous month and 19.2%
had smoked tobacco — the first time since 1981 that marijuana was more
popular than cigarettes.
This
is GREAT news since pot kills nobody and cigarettes kill hundreds of
thousands of Americans per year.
This may indicate that public
health campaigns aimed at discouraging alcohol and tobacco use are
working,
and that similar campaigns aimed specifically at marijuana might be
equally effective. There's little evidence
that continued criminalization has discouraged teen drug use, but
better education might.
Like Roger Waters says, "We don't need no 'education'."
We'd like the facts, please, but our flip-flopping president thinks we don't deserve the truth.