The “Coalition for Safe Streets”, the nascent cops-n-prosecutors group fighting Massachusetts Question 2, has a website chock full of Reefer Madness. (Question 2 would decriminalize an ounce or less possession by adults.)
It’s also funny to me, because I’m trying to imagine who exactly is against safe streets? Oh, I know, they’re trying to paint marijuana reform as danger in the streets, I guess. Notice they don’t tell you what they’re actually for. The pro-Question 2 group is “Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy” – they’re coming right out and telling you what they’re about: marijuana. But the anti-Question 2 group doesn’t call themselves “Coalition for Prohibiting Marijuana”, they’ve got to fool you with “Safe Streets”.
Coalition for Safe Streets Launches Ad!
Question 2 benefits drug dealers and dangerous criminals. Question 2 provides for the retailing of marijuana in our communities and enabling drug dealers to operate free from the threat of criminal prosecution. One ounce of marijuana has a street value of $600 and equates to approximately 60 individual sales.
Let’s see, an ounce is 28 grams, divide by sixty… So Massachusetts is overrun by dealers carrying only a bag of sixty half-gram joints (if you generously count the weight of the paper), selling them for ten bucks apiece? Really? And tokers are buying them one at a time, not getting bulk eighths or quarters? Hmmm. I’m from Idaho originally, so I don’t know how y’all roll on the East Coast, but all the drug dealers and dangerous criminals I’ve known (a few) laugh at the word “ounces”.
Today’s marijuana poses a serious public health threat and is dramatically more potent than the drug used by baby boomers 30 years ago.
Wait for it…
Marijuana contains nine times the mind-altering THC as 30 years ago; is more carcinogenic than cigarette tobacco; is a primary factor in juvenile hospital admissions; and is more strongly associated with juvenile crime than alcohol. Marijuana users are 10 times more likely to be injured, or injure others, in automobile crashes, and a large percentage of arrestees (30-40%) test positive for marijuana.
Wow! Ladies and Gentlemen, a full triple-reverse Anslinger with a one-and-a-half twist in the McCaffrey position! Let’s go to the tape:
Nine times the THC? Government says today’s weed is 9.6% THC, which is questionable, but let’s work with it, 9.6% divide by nine… that’s a tiny bit over 1% THC… so when my folks were digging Saturday Night Fever, everyone was smoking industrial hemp?
Marijuana smokers, even chronic heavy users, show no more risk of head, neck, and lung cancers than their non-smoking counterparts.
Hospital admissions only prove someone used marijuana, not that marijuana caused the admission.
When you count possession of marijuana as a crime, of course people who use marijuana will have higher crime stats.
Studies do not show that using cannabis increases any severity of auto crashes. But since marijuana is the most popular illicit substance and it shows up the longest in screening, a person who crashes has a good chance of having detectable marijuana in her system, even if she wasn’t impaired when she crashed.
And since, again, marijuana’s popular, and, again, having it is a crime, and, again, it stays in your system for weeks, it stands to reason that a large percentage of arrestees would test positive for marijuana.
Massachusetts is best served by preserving our current laws that help keep drugs away from our children, drug dealers off the streets and those under the influence of drugs out from behind the wheel of a car. And current law is fair to first-time offenders by requiring judges to dismiss charges and seal their records following a probationary period.
Because no potential employer looks twice at someone who has a sealed criminal record. And if you’re a second-time offender, you deserve that criminal records stain in the Massachusetts CORI database.
By the way, your current laws aren’t keeping drugs away from your children. 83.9% of high school seniors say marijuana is easy or fairly easy to get and 42.4% of 12th graders have tried it at least once.
