Do you think it's a coincidence that when top Legalizer group National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws shortens their name that it spells NORML? After all, what is their goal? To NORML-ize marijuana by reducing the perception of harm so that people will be more accepting when legalization starts knocking. More NORML-ization from Stroup The Founder and current Board Member of NORML released a new blog on the organizations website earlier today on how marijuana users are still being unjustly singled out, but not as much as before. In this blog Stroup talks about how teen use is down while adult use is up. I was little concerned about the numbers he used in the area of people being arrested because the link to the FBI data had nothing to support his points. When you open the link you are taken to a page that towards the bottom had a table with drug arrests, but the stats are in percentages and not actual numbers. The rest of the page is stats or links to stats for violent crimes and property crimes. Just like his entire career as a marijuana activist these stats seem to be made up or assumptions. One thing I can tell you is that marijuana possession arrests aren't even close to being as high as Stroup and other Legalizers will tell you. The actual amount of people arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana is less than 1% of the total people arrested. The next part of his blog is about public acceptance and how more adults are using as compared to past years. I don't really see that as a good thing, but even with the latest polls adult marijuana users only make up about 10% of the total US population. For hundreds of years we have sat back and watched as tobacco and alcohol have ruined millions peoples lives, health and families. Up until recent decades both industries have denied the negative health effects of their products and have even manipulated to research while doing it. Why in the world would we want to add marijuana to this problem? Now we want to introduce another addiction for profit industry that hasn't been able to prove that it can regulate itself in the medical area and now we want to make it mainstream and allow anybody to use it? In legal states we are seeing a rise in emergency room visits and calls to poison control with kids for accidental exposure and also for accidental overdoses for adults. this is an industry where they are selling a hazardous products and have college age kids behind the counter with very little training if any on warning their customers of the hazards. The marijuana laws don't require warning on packages like the tobacco and alcohol industry do as shown above. The next thing he talks about is teen use and how is has gone down over the last decade. Well I hate to break it to him but teen use nationally hasn't gone down at all. When you look at the data for teen use nationally (Red line) it looks like a roller coaster in that it just goes up and down. Past month marijuana use for teens has been hanging around the 6-7% area for the past decade. What we're seeing in legal states is that past month marijuana use is actually slowly going up over the past decade. If you look at the data for Colorado, who legalized recreation in 2012 and medical in 2000, you will see that teen use has almost doubled since 2006. He also says that teens are finding it harder to get the drug with the push for legalization and the age restrictions for legal markets. According to one teen in a documentary that was posted on YouTube, "Marijuana is easier to get than water" in a legal market. Rational thinking and common sense would tell someone that adding availability to adults would add availability to kids. That has always been the case for tobacco and alcohol. Tobacco is regulated with an age restriction of 18 and older and alcohol is 21 and older. We all know that teens have no problem getting a hold of those products, why would marijuana be any different. "We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, we'll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name. That's our way of getting to them " The next section of Stoup's blog is nothing more than promoting his drug as to NORL-ize it some more. Stroup gave an interview with the Emory Wheel back in 1979, that he suddenly can't remember, saying that "We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, we'll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name. That's our way of getting to them" . He openly admitted to trying to mislead the public into thinking that marijuana is medicinal so that he can give the drug a good name. Now he is talking about how thanks to his plan we now have "High quality marijuana" and how the government has no business telling you what you can and cannot do in your own home. The stance against legalization has nothing to do with trying to tell people what they can and cannot do in their own homes, it is 100% about not wanting another addiction for profit industry with the goal of targeting our kids. But you know how these legalizers like playing the victim all the time. If you want to spend your whole day getting high, go for it. That's your own business. But if you do stay in your house and don't drive anywhere or go to work. your need to get high doesn't trump the need of others to want to drive safely and to not get hurt by an intoxicated person at work. If you want to grow a couple plants in your backyard, have a blast. The Police don't care about you and your couple plants that you use for personal consumption. That petty misdemeanor isn't worth the time it would take to do the paperwork and then court time. What the Police do care about is the person with a garage full of plants that intends to sell it to other people including kids. But now thanks to legalization in 4 states that drug dealer now has a store front and guess what....yep, that product is still getting to kids. The next section of this blog is the most concerning. "We still have a great deal of work to do before responsible marijuana smokers are treated fairly: Job discrimination, child custody issues, and DUID are just three of the more important areas where smokers are still treated like second class citizens." Job discrimination is not a marijuana only thing. There are a lot of companies that will not hire someone who uses tobacco either. And thanks to living in a country with Free Enterprise the government cannot tell an employer that they cannot test for THC in either pre-employment or random drug tests. It is up to the employer whether they want to test for that or not. I am extremely curious to know what he means by "and DUID". Is he actually advocating for marijuana users to be exempt from Driving Under the Influence of Drugs law? Marijuana is an intoxicant that is proven to impair your ability to safely operate a motor vehicle, but I guess this is just another attempt by Stroup to deflect and compare marijuana to tobacco. I here it all the time, "If people can smoke cigarettes in public and drive why can't I?" Maybe that's because marijuana isn't tobacco for starters. We need to stop letting marijuana users play the victim because it is allowing them to play the system. In Oregon and Colorado there has been way too much regulation removed via legislation because they play the victim. It's like watching a 5 year old throw a temper tantrum until they get their way. Lies and deceit are getting these law passed and the truth must be louder than the lies. 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1 Comment
Brandon
10/3/2016 03:49:49 pm
This has to be one of the worst articles I've read in a very very long time. Terrible reasoning at best. A hate laden smokescreen at worst.
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