The state’s major newspaper is clearly disillusioned with marijuana in Washington, even though it supported Initiative-502 back in 2012. The editorial implied that the medical and recreational regulation should be integrated, calling the legislature’s failure to do so “abysmal.” At last, Seattle’s mayor issued a plan to regulate medical marijuana, but it probably doesn’t have much teeth. Continue reading Washington’s Marijuana Policies Still Chaotic→
Exactly one year ago today a hash oil explosion in Bellevue destroyed 10 apartment units just outside of Seattle. Three men started the fire at 6:20 a.m. while using butane to extract the hash oil from marijuana. One hundred police and fire fighters were called to battle the fire which lasted several hours and injured seven.
Nan Campbell, former mayor of Bellevue died in the fire after suffering from a broken pelvis. Other residents ended up with broken bones, after jumping out of 2nd and 3rd story windows. Originally it was thought that the injuries were not life-threatening.
Residents who were interviewed lost all their belongings. There were $1,500,000 in damages to the building and about 1/3 of that in personal possessions. The one shining light at the end was that a woman who thought her cat was gone later found the pet under the rubble. After investigation and with the aid of federal agents, three men were charged on July 22, 2014.
It has been said that marijuana legalization privatizes profits while the public pays all the costs.
Home processing of BHO from marijuana is not legal. However, when police had come to investigate the two men living in the apartment on October 17, they showed their medical marijuana cards and denied making butane hash oil. One of those charged was visiting the complex. At least 5 other explosions occurred in the Seattle area this year.
This year 31 home explosions triggered by making the marijuana concentrate, BHO, occurred in Colorado by the beginning of May. Butane is a highly volatile solvent and a flammable gas at room temperature. Without proper ventilation it can easily go off like a bomb with ball of fire, blowing out windows, and doing damage to a house, condo or apartment and putting innocent neighbors at risk. This is particularly of concern to multilevel housing units like motels, condos and apartment buildings. Twice children in Colorado were trapped on the 2nd level and had to be rescued.
The first hash oil explosion in Colorado happened in 2012. There were 11 explosions in 2013. With legalization these incidence increase.
Get the Parents Opposed to Pot Hash Oil Facts! Download our new flyer, which describes the hash oil explosions in states which have permissive marijuana laws: POPPOT-Hash Oil Statistics.
The shootings last week in Marysville, Washington, forces into question: What triggers school violence? Jaylen Fryberg, who shot himself and five others, was a popular, 15-year old Homecoming Prince. Last December at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, an 18-year old with few signs of mental illness, shot a fellow student and tried to shoot a teacher. One died at Arapahoe HS, while three died this past week, plus the shooters.
Teachers and mental health professionals are supposed to be able to spot a troubled youth. These teen boys defied that category. Jaylen Fryberg, was upset over a break-up and invited friends to eat lunch with him, knowing he would shoot them. Karl Pierson was upset with a teacher who kicked him off the debate team, and so decided to shoot people. To seek revenge and kill oneself after a disappointment is not normal. These youth came from the states that had legalized marijuana. Marijuana needs to be added to our discussion of what causes mass violence, along with violence in the media, access to guns, violent video games, etc. (Since this article was written, the Twitter feed of Jaylen Fryberg showed him to be quite a marijuana user. His ex-girlfriend said it made his stupid.)
In all fairness, two of the worst mass shooters in the US, the perpetrators of the Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech massacres, appear to have never used marijuana. They were more logical in their planning and succeeded in killing more people, unfortunately.
Modern Reefer “Madness”
For every claim of a brilliant mind that used marijuana, without negative effect, there’s another person who was harmed by using it. The people described below indicate that marijuana has strong adverse reactions for some individuals, and for society.
1) On September 26, Brian Howard started a fire at the air traffic controllers station in Aurora, IL, holding up commercial planes for days. He was high, and admitted to having smoked marijuana right before the incident.
2) Amanda Bynes’ mother said she hasn’t been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, as rumored, andblamed the weird behavior on heavy marijuana use. Amanda alleged her father had committed child and sexual abuse, but recanted.
3) Kevin Ward, Jr., was tragically hit by race car driver Tony Stewart on August 8, 2014, after he got out of his car to confront an oncoming driver on the track. He eventually died. It’s perplexing that he would get out of his car considering the situation, but autopsy results show he had marijuana intoxication.
4) Marijuana probably affected the mental states of Megan Huntsman and Erika Murray–two neglectful mothers who let their babies die in their homes. Other drugs may be involved, too.
5) According to the father of Jodi Arias, accused of the bizarre behavior and the murder of her boyfriend, she has never been the same since she started to grow marijuana at age 14.
6) Johar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombers, was supposedly easy- going and smoked a lot of pot. Since the Boston Marathon bombing, his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev has since been linked to a triple murder on Sept. 11, 2011. The victims had their throats slashed and were covered in marijuana.
7) In 2012, James Holmes shot and killed 12, and wounded 58, in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. Though he probably had not been sane for a number of years, a neighbor reported that he was frequently seen outside by the apartment building smoking pot.
8) On May 26, 2012, Rudy Eugene was caught on tape eating another man in Miami for 18 minutes before police arrived. When police couldn’t stop him, he was shot. Eugene died while the disfigured man survived. Toxicology reports showed that marijuana was the only drug in Eugene’s body when he gnawed the man.
9) Casey Anthony was amazingly detached from her actions and from her daughter’s death. According to a friend of Casey Anthony, she smoked a lot of marijuana, but he was unaware if she used other drugs.
10) Amanda Knox, when confronted by police the day after Meredith Kercher’s brutal murder. A regular pot smoker at the time, she admitted to smoking marijuana the night of the murder. Her blunted emotional reaction to the bloody incident during police questioning was very strange. (THC stays in the body up to a month, it doesn’t pass like alcohol.) Without judging Knox to be guilty, we can certainly understand why Knox’s non-reaction to her roommates’ bloody death would lead Italian police to think she was guilty. She is also from Washington, a state that worships marijuana usage at a festival each year. One may conclude that Knox was excessively immature and out of touch, but then what was she doing in a foreign country?
The list could go on, but this page represents a warning against validating marijuana. It’s ungrounded to think legalization would make marijuana less appealing to those under age 21, or regulate underage usage. Knox, Ward, Anthony,Johar Tsarnaev or Arias were under age 21 during the incidents, or when they started using marijuana. It’s likely that every individual mentioned above began use while while in adolescence.
This “experiment” in legalization is an opportunity for us to step up the warnings and increase funding for drug education and prevention. It’s time to stop saying that marijuana isn’t harmful, or that it’s safer than alcohol. Most of these examples are Caucasians, but there’s also a Native American, one black and one Hispanic. Crazy, pot-influenced behaviors and psychosis don’t discriminate. They affect male and female, though the males are more likely to be shooters.
Colorado Governor Hickenlooper of Colorado admitted his state was “reckless” to legalize marijuana, but the public hears less about the train wreck in Washington state. The big lesson in Washington is that an unregulated medical marijuana system doesn’t suddenly get regulated — after marijuana is legalized for recreational use.