Adult Use of Marijuana Act is Wrong for California

August 6, 2016

Proposition 64 Allows Pot Edibles and Advertising

California’s Proposition 64 is called the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, or AUMA. Please tell your friends in California to vote NO ON 64 for good reasons.

1)It allows pot shops sell marijuana candy and soda, near where children live. According to the Latino Report the former mayor of Downey said, “These things look just like the candy that children love, and I’m not sure why the pot industry feels the need to market such kid-friendly stuff, unless it is taking a page from the tobacco industry’s handbook.”

Pot drinks showed up the backpacks of 5th graders at a Seattle school after legalization.

The marijuana lobbyists tell voters that “drug dealers don’t card but dispensaries do.” That statement implies that children won’t take it from their parents, which is either very naive or deliberately deceptive. All evidence is contrary.

2) It fails to properly protect from stoned drivers: Proposition 64’s proponents refused to include a DUI standard for marijuana. This has become a real problem in states that have legalized pot like Washington, where the percentage of traffic deaths involving stoned drivers doubled in just one year post-legalization.

peyton.knowlton.gofundme — In Longmont, CO, a 20-year old driver under the influence of pot killed an 8-year-old girl riding her bike on May 20. She was coming back from school, accompanied by stepdad.

3) Stoned drivers and underage use packs a double whammy: An under-aged marijuana user in Colorado recently killed an 8-year-old girl riding her bike. In Washington, a 17-year-old driver killed three of his classmates while driving after he got stoned. In the past four months, 17-year-old drivers killed bicyclists while driving stoned in three separate fatal crashes. Proposition 64 cannot make right the wrongs of marijuana legalization.

Marijuana Edibles available in Colorado often look like familiar candies.i — Marijuana Edibles often look like familiar candies. Proposition 64 allows the industry to set safety standards and do the testing.

4) It puts the pot industry in charge of safety standards: Proposition 64 allows the pot lobby to set the product safety and testing standard which will be based on voluntary codes. That’s like putting Philip Morris in charge of tobacco regulation.

5) Increased homelessness/mental illness: It will bring more people to the state for marijuana who may suffer from mental illness as a consequence of their drug use and end up homeless.* California’s drug users already face the problem of homelessness. At first glance, it seems that the West Coast has more homelessness because its warm weather attracts people. It may be that marijuana use — most popular in the West — has caused the homelessness.

6) Proposition 64 doesn’t prohibit advertising.

7) It specifically allows convicted drug-dealing felons to get into the marijuana businesses. (California’s current medical marijuana law does not allow these same felons to get into the business.)

The marijuana industry tells us that “Prohibition has failed.” Legalization is a much bigger failure. Let’s not be duped again. Please donate to either No on 64, to Citizens Against the Legalization of Marijuana (CALM). If you want to help all states fight legalization, please support SAM Action, and its educational wing, Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

DrugPreventionEducation — We have failed miserably at educating why not to use drugs. It’s time for a big change in strategies, back to education in the schools.

In California, anyone who is 18 can get a medical marijuana card for the most dubious of reasons. Some may argue that the by legalizing marijuana for adults only, the state will control its out-of-control drug dealing in the form medical pot dispensaries. A state as big and diverse as California failed miserably with medical marijuana. What makes you think they can do any better. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom says California doesn’t want to make the same mistakes as Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Then don’t legalize pot at all.

This link has fact sheets with information and articles to explain marijuana’s connection to psychosis/schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses. More studies suggest that marijuana is a causal factor in psychosis rather than the other way around. Marijuana advocates want to believe that people only use pot medicate as a result of their mental illness. Sometimes mental illness may come first, but those with schizophrenia who used marijuana before the diagnosis showed symptoms of the disease an an age three years younger on average than those who did not use pot.

Colorado, Driving, Washington

Tragic Accidents Related to Marijuana Involve Children

August 1, 2016

15-year-old driver high on pot paralyzes boy, rips truck into 3 parts near Seattle

When states legalize marijuana for adults, children are in danger, too. Here’s recent traffic accidents involving marijuana. Eight are dead, three of them children.

A 7-year-old boy is paralyzed, because a girl driving under the influence of marijuana smashed into his dad’s pickup truck near Seattle on May 24, 2016. The unlicensed, 15-year-old driver was in a BMW, with a 24-year-old man and a 5-year-old child. The man driving the truck sustained critical injuries, with his truck torn into three parts. (photo above: Kent fire department)
An 8-year old girl, Peyton Knowlton, who was hit and killed while riding her bicycle in Longmont, Colorado, on May 20. Newspaper articles on July 27 report that the police investigation confirms that the 20-year-old driver high had been high on marijuana at the time. He was below the legal age for purchasing marijuana. (A video on below shows the scene of the accident.)
Peyton Knowlton from a gofundme page, as shared in an article on Westword.com
In Boulder, Colorado on May 7, a 17-year-old was driving home from smoking pot with friends when he plowed through a stoplight while stoned and killed two young adults. It means that at least two deadly accidents in Boulder County involved marijuana during the month of May.
July, 2016: A Wisconsin teen admitted to using marijuana shortly before his vehicle missed a stop sign and collided with an SUV. The driver was a 17-year old. His 16-year-old passenger died, as did an adult in another vehicle. The driver was in intensive care.
June, 2016: Authorities in Arizona believe the woman who caused a deadly crash was driving under the influence of marijuana. Court documents reveal the woman was driving at least 75 mph in a 40 mph zone when she crossed the center line, plowing into an oncoming vehicle and killing a man and his daughter. A 2-year-old and 4-year-old were injured.
In Virginia, a 27-year-old father drove under the influence of marijuana with three children in the car. He collided with an oncoming train and the youngest, a 3-year-old girl, died on March 25, 2015. Last month he was sentenced to three years in prison.

We wrote about bicyclists’ deaths recently. In Boulder County, three died in two accidents in May. Here’s a video from the report after Peyton Knowlton’s death, which occurred in Longmont:

Driving

Driving High Slammed in AAA Report

July 28, 2016

marijuana-driving — Driving high may change your life, but not in a good way.

Stoners think driving high is safer than driving straight (wrong) and better than driving drunk (not hardly). The jokes about driving painfully slow or stopping at a green light always get big laughs at the comedy club. But, stoned driving is no laughing matter, and like drunk driving, it kills.

The American Automobile Association recently issued a damning report about the real consequences of legalization. One of the first states to legalize marijuana in 2012, Washington state has seen traffic fatalities caused by stoned drivers double from 2013 to 2014.

See this CBS Evening News Video

Here is the press release issued by AAA, Fatal Road Crashes Involving Marijuana Double After State Legalizes Drug.

Colorado is another state where traffic fatalities have increased as a result of legalization. In this video, we see how legalization activists are misusing the statistics and misleading the public.

Watch Colorado Traffic Fatalities Video

A California law firm warns that even medical marijuana users who drive impaired are breaking the law. Yet, these same attorneys seem to assuage the guilt of marijuana users by saying it doesn’t impair driving (they are looking to defend stoned drivers, so naturally they try to appear pro-pot).

PopPot.org has written stories inspired by news headlines of pedestrians, motorists and bikers and bicyclists crashed into by drivers under the influence of this brain changing drug. Marijuana: Pedestrians and Cyclists Not Safe.

See more PopPot.org articles on marijuana and driving here.

See also DUID Victim Voices, an advocacy group that works for tougher drugging and driving laws.

marijuana-traffic-fatalities — Marijuana traffic fatalities can be prevented. Don’t light up.

Our next article will cover some of the marijuana traffic deaths over the last few months.

Medical Marijuana

Has the “Medical” in Marijuana Qualified Pot for Rescheduling?

July 17, 2016

Marijuana Lobby Depends on Selling a Lie to Pull off a Scam

If you tell a lie long enough, people start believing it’s the truth. We found a “medical” marijuana box in the middle of the soaps and toiletries of a gift shop in a state where lobbyists have been trying to commercialize “medical” marijuana through the state legislature. Marked “For Daily Use Only,” it gives the appearance of necessity, much like a pill box. The marijuana industry is finding good ways to trick the public into believing marijuana is “medicinal,” just as the tobacco industry claimed cigarettes were healthy. However, there are 450,000 marijuana-related hospitalizations in the US each year.*

This summer the head of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) said he would be making a decision about rescheduling marijuana which would mean a change from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. However, this past week a federal magistrate judge in New York rebuffed a challenge to federal laws which place marijuana among the most dangerous drugs.

inside lid — Under the lid of the “medical” marijuana box in a Shenandoah Valley, VA gift shop. Virginia has a limited medical marijuana program and doesn’t allow joints to be smoked as “medicine.” There was a petition to fire the DEA Administrator for calling “medical” marijuana a joke, but who can claim this box is anything other than a joke?

It should be no surprise, as Judge Kimberly Mueller made a similar ruling against rescheduling in April, 2015. Her decision followed a Court ruling of January 2013, which followed many years of studying the issue, by the DEA, with input from the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Ruling of July 12 in New York

In his ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Feldman said, “There can be no dispute that public opinion on whether marijuana has legitimate medical uses is changing in this country.” But Feldman ruled that Charles and Alexander Green, two brothers accused of marijuana trafficking, had a to prove that current federal laws are “so arbitrary and irrational as to be unconstitutional.”

The Greens, who are from California, are accused of major roles in a marijuana trafficking operation that brought the drug into western New York. They have challenged how federal law classifies marijuana, in the same category as heroin. The category known as “Schedule 1” drugs suggests Congress and federal authorities consider it among the nation’s most dangerous illicit substances.

Marijuana, as a plant or a weed, is not medicinal. Derivatives may have medical application, but those are derivatives of the plant not marijuana. National Families in Action put a good explanation of the difference between marijuana and marijuana-based medicines.

Scam2 — NORML always planned to use the medical idea as a scam to advance the cause of legalization.

It is possible that the DEA may reschedule cannabidiol, one of the cannabinoids in marijuana, which gives relief to some children with seizures. Today’s high-THC marijuana has lower proportions of CBD than the marijuana of the 60s, 70s and 80s, which makes marijuana far more dangerous, on par with heroin. (Any medicine derived from a plant does not go by the plant name, but the marijuana lobby tries to mislead the public into confusing the extract from the plant.)

Quotes by leaders of NORML reveal that medical marijuana was planned as a scam from the start. On February 6, 1979, at Emory University, Keith Stroup said: “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.” Richard Cowan and Ed Rosenthal followed up with statements saying that getting people to buy into the idea of medical marijuana and getting hundreds of thousands to do it will be the key to getting full legalization.

Watch the video.

*Information comes from checking the long DEA report that was available online until recently showed a growing number of hospital treatments for marijuana up until 2010. Obviously, it is more now. Here is the summary available online.

Parents Opposed to Pot