Category Archives: Environment

Drug Policy, Editorial, Environment

Expert Opinions burst stoners’ pipe dream of pot legalization!

Two recent opinion letters in major newspapers should send shock waves to Progressive voters  who value social justice and environmental issues.  They expose that marijuana legalization actually harms the promises of a more just society and a better earth. 

Kevin Sabet, PhD, President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) wrote in The Baltimore Sun on June 30, 2024.  Sabet applauded Governor Moore but also said that his pardons prove that marijuana legalization is not about social justice.  (Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore recently issued 175,000 pardons for marijuana convictions, erasing the records. President Biden and other governors made similar moves in recent months.)

Sabet agrees with Moore’s pardons. However, he explains that it would have been possible without allowing the commercial marijuana industry to invade the state. (Nearby Virginia has decriminalization, without legalization.) Continue reading Expert Opinions burst stoners’ pipe dream of pot legalization! →

Environment

Is Marijuana eco-friendly?

Marijuana is hazardous to your health and the earth.

The only thing green about marijuana is the color. Otherwise, it is an environmental disaster.

Whether grown outdoors or indoors, it is dirty agriculture and negatively impacts air & water quality, robs the electric grid and watersheds, and  produces greenhouse gases. The industry uses heavy pesticides which put wildlife at risk. It was never meant to be a large scale agricultural product. The end product contains mold and toxins that are harmful to humans.

https://youtu.be/iNdTscw7Bpg

Continue reading Is Marijuana eco-friendly? →

Environment, Featured

Is marijuana a direct factor in some of the wildfires?

Read our Part 1: Marijuana, fires and global warming.  We continue with a theme linking marijuana to the wildfires in the West.

One man has been arrested for starting six fires around Portland, and another for the Sweet Creek fire near Eugene. Officials have also arrested two men in Washington and one woman in California. In southern Oregon, Michael Jarrod Bakkela started a fire which merged with the Almeda fire.  The Jackson County sheriff’s office alleges significant damage from the fire Bakkela started in the town of Phoenix.  Since he also violated probation on an original charge of unlawful possession of methamphetamine, it’s important that we look into his drug history and test for drugs in those arrested for starting fires.  

(We suggest that drug use, rather than political ideology, contributes directly to acts of arson. ) Continue reading Is marijuana a direct factor in some of the wildfires? →

Environment

Do marijuana grows lead to fires and global warming?

For thousands of miles along the west coast, skies are red, orange, or gray with the dust of ash. It’s apocalyptic.  People are losing their homes and more than a few people have died in the three states which bookend our west coast.  Watching these catastrophic flames begs the answer to a new question.  How much global warming and climate change could have been avoided if California, Washington and Oregon hadn’t legalized pot? 

The track of west coast fires follows the trail of growth in the massive marijuana industry over 25 years. It began north of San Francisco, moved further south along the central coast of California and up into Oregon and Washington. Washington, which made pot legal in 2012, hit a historical moment with more than 330,000 acres burning in 24 hours, more than in the entire fire seasons of 12 out of the last 18 years. Not until the last few years has Oregon, which legalized marijuana in 2015, been a large part of the fire problem.  Oregon has a huge surplus of marijuana.

At the moment, four cities on the “West Coast of Weed” have the world’s worst air quality.  Please tell Congress not to allow expansion of the marijuana industry. Continue reading Do marijuana grows lead to fires and global warming? →