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→
Since 2011, at least 68 people were treated for burns caused by butane hash oil fires and explosions, at northern California burn centers, including Shriners Hospital for Children, Sacramento, and at the UC Davis Regional Burn Center.
Usually those making BHO suffer the most, but several times it has happened at homes with children. The most recent baby who was badly burned in a hash oil (BHO) explosion was a 19-month old boy at a student housing complex in Montana. The law has not kept up with the problem, as parents who engage in this deadly practice still have custody and visitation rights. Children are threatened by neighbors who do it, too.
Thanks to quick emergency response and to the quality of emergency medical treatment available in the United States, it appears that all of the children have survived. However, we have raised a group of young adults who are so accustomed to hearing “marijuana is safe” that they have no notion of the need to protect children from the dangers pot involves.
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It also happened last year in a state without a legal marijuana program. In Pennsylvania woman pled guilty to leaving her 3-year-old twins to die in a fire while she left the house to see whether her marijuana had been stolen by her 15-year-old daughter. Police say the boys turned on a burner on a grease-covered stove, sparking flames that soon engulfed the house.
Oregon recently enacted a law forbidding daycare employees and operators from using medical marijuana. Let’s hope other states follow suit, and that, in family courts, states do not give custody and visitation rights to marijuana-using parents, especially those making BHO.
As California Gov Jerry Brown has said, the world is too dangerous a place for Americans not be alert by using pot. This concept applies to parenthood. Parenthood is too large a responsibility for us not to protect our children. We need not expose small children to the manufacture of BHO or put them in the care of parents who prioritize marijuana over their children. However, when neighbors make hash oil, parents may have no warnings.
Our tolerance for marijuana has taught a new generation of young adults that marijuana is safe. Making BHO is mainly done in western states, but the explosions have happened in Florida, Ohio, Massachusetts, Florida, Chicago, Michigan, Virginia, Houston. It will spread east if we don’t watch out. No longer should anyone say, “safer than alcohol” or “it’s just pot.” We have sent the wrong message, and need to replace it with a message that parenting and pot use do not mix.
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.
(Part 2 , see Part 1 – Our first article is about why African-Americans are less supportive of legalization than outsider groups who are trying to impose it on Washington, DC and elsewhere.)
Discussion of marijuana legalization centers mainly on personal freedom, flaws in the criminal justice system, and a theory that government can regulate it and take profits away from cartels and criminals. There is no evidence that it is possible to regulate marijuana, and black markets persist in Washington and Colorado. Since the regulation theory has largely been disproven by the two states and by studies, this article concentrates on criminal justice.
Can anyone truly believe legalizing marijuana would end racial discrimination in America? (Recent evidence in Denver and Seattle after the legalization of marijuana in Seattle suggests that racial discrepancies in arrests don’t end.) However, these disparities are the main reasons people cite for supporting legalization of pot in Washington, DC.
Taking on the ACLU Positions
Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L Lanier addressed the racial divide in arrests in the Washington Post. Some of her comments specifically responded to a American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report.
“The ACLU also appears not to understand our city very well,” she wrote. “It is, indeed, a sad fact that blacks represent a disproportionate number of arrestees in the District; the proportions are similar for marijuana arrests, for other narcotics and all arrests. But this is a complex issue that cannot be boiled down to an allegation that MPD (Metropolitan Police) selectively enforces the law against our black communities.”
Lanier points out that police in certain neighborhoods received a higher volume of calls from residents complaining about drugs, and that 59% of the police officers are black, a proportion higher than the city’s population. Blacks are arrested more for marijuana because they tend to smoke it in public among groups, unlike whites who more often smoke in the privacy of their residence or clubs.
Cathy Lanier is the most popular citywide public figure in Washington, DC, with an approval rating over 70%.
Drug Policy in General
Chief Lanier emphasized that the police department in Washington, DC, is strongly committed to supporting youth. The goal is to prevent youths from ending up in the criminal justice system for a minor transgression. Since she has been in the police department for 24 years and chief of police for seven, she has first-hand knowledge which the ACLU lacks. She realizes that where there is already criminal activity, trying to put the marijuana under regulations may mean that criminals would branch out to other forms of crime and selling other drugs.
Much of the country agrees with rehabilitating drug addicts and drug abusers, rather than punishment. While states vary, the drug treatment model is becoming more prevalent. Transforming our drug policy rather than adopting complete tolerance and normalization of drugs is a wiser policy. The answer is not legalization.
We need a non-partisan national discussion, that considers all sides of the issue. Mandatory minimum sentences don’t accomplish the goals desired when they were established. Three strikes laws should be abolished. Prisons-for-profit aren’t allowed in most of the country, but they could also be banned.
“War on Drugs” Rhetoric
The idea that the “war on drugs” is a war on black and Hispanic communities is too simplistic to explain a situation. The ACLU, which has had an important stake in legalization efforts in Maine and Washington (2 states with low African-American and Hispanic populations), uses this arguments to press legalization of drugs.
Wealthy white drug dealers can probably afford more expensive lawyers than minority drug dealers, a different matter. Black males have been disproportionately jailed for violating drug laws. Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow, supports legalization of all drugs. However, she is now lamenting that legalization has benefited the white males who are now making all the profits.
The drug policy – violence theory also demonstrates a poor understanding of the nature of humanity. Gangs and cartels are money-making paths that bring profits quickly. Anyone can be lured into the profit motive without fully thinking of the harm, particularly when a person is young and risky behaviors make it seem exciting. There is a certain “high” that comes from evading the law.
Criminal businesses will be always be attractive to both the rich and the poor. Some cartel leaders are well-educated and even rich. If it were only about income inequality, many would get out of the drug trade sooner. We need to foster opportunities for the poor, so they don’t see drug dealing as a route out of poverty. Regardless of circumstances, they’re hungry for power and wouldn’t lose power over people, if pot became legal. They would branch out to other crimes such as human trafficking, and to other drugs.
When Drug Wars Occur
Drug wars happen when growers and cartels compete to have the strongest, most potent strains of marijuana. High-THC plants bring higher profits, but the marijuana industry pretends that government is to blame for the greedy, violent wars between drug cartels.
We can see the violence that comes with the competition in the drug trade in the book and movie, Savages of 2012, with Benicio del Toro. An earlier movie Blow, in which Johnny Depp played notorious drug dealer George Jung, tries to illicit sympathy for the criminal who was instrumental in bringing the Columbian cocaine trade to the USA. It is clear that greed and adventure motivated Jung, without concern about the harmful consequences to others.
Marijuana advocates who say “drug wars don’t work,” play into current anti-government sentiments. They say those who don’t agree with marijuana must be taking money from the drug-making companies, the police unions, alcohol industry, the prison or prison guard industry. Otherwise, how could anyone not believe in their psychotropic drug that has been manipulated — to become stronger and to work medical miracles, as they claim? In their twisted logic, they say the US has created cartel violence in Mexico. Violence of course has many causes including poverty. On the other hand, there is evidence that cartels have moved out of Colorado into Central America, and are causing our heroin epidemic today.