Subtle ways the mainstream media undermines the medical marijuana issue

CBS News has jumped on the cannabusiness bandwagon by opening up a series of reports on the surging popularity of marijuana legalization.  While some of the reports are even-handed and a few are even positive, there always seems to be something in the article to undermine the legitimacy of our cause.

Exhibit A: the “Wild West” atmosphere of California’s Prop 215 is implied to be the state of medical marijuana elsewhere.

In the back of [Richard Lee's] Blue Sky Coffee Shop there’s a steady stream of cash buyers, and not just for coffee.

“In the front you get the coffee and pastries, and in the back you get the cannabis,” Lee said.

A salesman told customers, “You’re welcome to pull the bags out and smell the herb as you like.”

What’s going on here is illegal under federal law, but permitted under California law that since 1996 has allowed marijuana for medical use.

A dozen other states have similar laws.

No, a dozen other states have much tighter laws than does California, with only Colorado having anything that approaches “In the front you get the coffee and pastries, and in the back you get the cannabis” shops.  But to the average reader in central Pennsylvania hearing the story, he thinks a vote for a medical marijuana bill that doesn’t even allow the fundamental right to grow your own means an Amsterdam-style coffee shop is opening next to the Amish market in Lancaster.

Exhibit B: demonstrable falsehoods go unquestioned in the media’s attempt to be “fair and balanced”.

And drug fighters warn aging boomers that marijuana isn’t the gentle weed they remember. Today’s pot is a whole different kettle of fish

“The marijuana of the 1960s and Woodstock is not what’s being sold on the streets in the United States today, said Chief Bernard Melekian, head of the California Police Chiefs Association. “The narcotic portion, the THC of marijuana in the ’60s, hovered around one or two percent. THC today is around 27 to 30 percent.

If Chief Melekian can find me a baby boomer who smoked 1% THC pot, he’ll have a story, because finding one would be like finding a unicorn; they just don’t exist.  But do the media do some fact-checking to find the government’s own sources tell us that average THC potency was 4%-5% back in the day and now comes in at 8%-10%?  Or that in foreign countries with medical marijuana like the Netherlands, 13% is the minimum acceptable potency and some medical strains are 18%?  Or do they mention that 100% THC in pill form is completely legal?

Nope.  If one person says medical marijuana is good, they have to find someone to say it is bad, no matter how egregious the lie, so they can be “neutral”.  Sorry, but Bill Maher’s right on this one: sometimes the facts are all on one side and to present the issue as if there is truly a controversy where none exists is a disservice to the truth – something I was raised to believe journalists were duty bound to seek.