Tweet
Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM) has a new brochure arguing against legalizing cannabis. Not surprisingly, CALM has decided to use disingenuous and illogical arguments against legalizing and regulating Cannabis. From their brochure (via DrugWarRant):
MARIJUANA CULTIVATION =
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
Drug cartels and illegal traffickers have found it
easier to grow marijuana in our national forests
than risk importing it across the border. Vast areas
of public lands are being used for grows, including
Yosemite and Sequoia. Homicides and threats
against hikers have already occurred on California’s
public lands.
Pot plantations are ecological disasters, poisoning
earth and water with outlawed pesticides. Taxpayers
pay the cost of clean-up, sometimes as much
as $1 million for a single site.
The environmental impact of growing cannabis is no different from the growing of any other plant, be it basil, tomatoes, rosemary, or oranges. legitimate farmers growing cannabis on their own property would not damage our public lands, use illegal pesticides, or put a financial clean-up burden to taxpayers.
The clandestine use of public lands to grow cannabis by criminal enterprises is a serious problem, but it is a problem created solely by the illegality of cannabis, a problem that would basically be solved by legalizing marijuana.
The only reason all cannabis is not grown by professional, tax-paying farmers, on their own property, following government regulations on the use of pesticides and other chemicals, is because it is ILLEGAL. Since growing cannabis on property owned by someone could result in significant financial harm and loss of that property, criminal organizations have made the cost-benefit analysis decision that it is better for their profit margins to use public land.
As I have asked before: Does Coors send armed men to plant illegal hops farms in Yellowstone? Does Tropicana try to hide orange groves deep in state parks? Of course not–because it does not make financial to do so with a legal crop.
Get Ready for the Disinformation Campaign
Sadly but not unexpectedly, CALM has decided to follow the path of many other anti-cannabis legalization efforts, using disinformation and nonsensical arguments instead of having a real debate. Expect more of it as the debate heats up in the coming months and years.
I do have to praise CALM for one thing, however, and that is pure chutzpah. To use a problem caused by prohibition that would basically be eliminated by ending prohibition as an argument against legalizing cannabis takes real guts.
20 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
So is this a Cali group? So far I haven’t seen any organized opposition to Oregon’s two bills, although neither has officially made the ballot. I did ask the signature company who the natural enemies would be, and they said surprisingly they didn’t yet know of any.
However, a couple of things have come up since OCTA went into signature gathering phase: the Portland Tribune has begun a “Failure of medical marijuana” series, which is misleading enough (the truth being that the specific failures of med-mar here and in Cali–loopholes in cultivation and distribution–are essentially solved with OCTA, which uses 100% of crop sales from licensed cultivars only, and state-owned dispensaries), but then the 2nd story in the series had the headline “Legal pot causing overdoses.” Nevermind that it was a reference to K2 and other similar-to-THC chemicals, now being sold as laced incense products, or that it had NOTHING to do with med-mar. Why the scare headline? Reader comments got the paper to change the head online and remove the reference to the med-mar series, but you can’t change a print headline, so the damage was probably done.
And late last week, the new US Attorney here joined the Multno County DA in threatening brilliant-hippie Reed College with loss of federal funding for their tolerance of drugs, because of two heroin overdoses in two years. They were careful to make sure everyone knew they included pot in their new “zero tolerance” approach with the college. Why? And why the timing?
Maybe they’re part of a quiet pushback, maybe not. I guess we’ll discover more when OCTA makes the ballot–but I’ll be on the lookout for CALM and references to it here in Oregon. Thanks.
there is always some interest that profit from prohibition. When it looks like it might pass they will come out of the woodwork.
Replace “Cannabis Legalization” with any progressive common-sensical initiative to solve a problem and you pretty much have the Republican strategy in the headline.
Yup, and they lie like crazy.
Want to see Mexico and Colombia descend further into narco-state chaos caused by the illegal status of drugs? Keep weed illegal.
What the hell are they smoking? *g*
I’ve hiked, camped, climbed, hunted, fished, foraged, spelunked… and just about everything else one can think of in and around many many national parks.. including many years in Yosemite.
And I have never once seen a hint of damage from illegal growers. Though I have found abandoned prohibition era still sites and old open dangerous wells.
Not saying it doesn’t happen, but this is blown way out of proportion.
It does not require any chutzpah to run a political campaign based on nonsensical arguments or even falsehoods. As long as the campaign can be made emotional and insure people don’t use their brains they have accomplished what they want. Our politicians especially the Atwater/Rove campaign managers have mastered this art of attacking their opponents for their own weakness. We should expect to see ads of distraught parents, dead kids and law enforcement in all their TV glory.
No More Reefer Madness!!
They tend to use state parks and not national parks because they are less patrolled.
Tobacco! What else big corp says it it good for ya and pot is Bad for ya.. So who ya going to listen to?? big corp or 5000+ proven years of pot use and little side effects? Huh? Huh?
Reading through the brochure, half of it is something Harry Anslinger could have been quoted as saying (throw in the obligatory “negroes, white women, and jazz music”…). It’s still all scare tactics, conflating statistics, correlation and causation.
If “drugged drivers cause 20% of vehicle crashes”, maybe they need to get the non-drugged drivers off the road
What?! No allusion to marijuana as a “gateway” drug? No horror stories of children od’ing on pot? The part about lumping heroine, cocaine, meth and pot together is just de rigeur. Can’t they come up with anything fresh and original? Apparently not – perhaps because they have no evidence.
A student group at Indiana University was called CALM – Citizen’s Alliance for Legalization of Marijuana.
Reefer Madness
There are, I suppose, people who oppose legal marijuana because they are extremely stupid. But most have ulterior motives. Like Obama.
Jane Hamsher is upstairs!
Late Nite FDL: Welcome to Third Round Semifinal Voting of “Name Our Pot Campaign” Contest
I really, really, really hope we can keep this whole thing on the message of the complete and unmitigated failure and waste of resources that exists in the current prohibition, irrespective of every increasingly draconian means for enforcing it.
It’s obvious that legalization is going to have problems, the issue is that they’re not nearly as horrific as the problems that prohibition creates.
Federal marijuana prohibition is a fully unconstitutional religious prohibition based on Exodus 22:18 Thou shall not suffer a witch to live. Here is a nice book on the history, I highly recommend it,
Marijuana – The First Twelve Thousand Years
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/abel.htm
Marijuana is completely harmless and a very useful medicine. From FOXN,
Are You Cannabis Deficient?
http://health.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/03/10/are-you-cannabis-deficient/
It is a states rights issue. From our constitution,
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
From my church,
Cultivation and enjoyment of Cannabis sacrament is a fundamental human right provided by God and protected by the first Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is our opinion that Cannabis is the original sacrament of Hebrew, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, Rasta and more, and fulfills the prophesies to ‘raise up for them a plant of renown…’
http://www.thc-ministry.org/
Last month our main church was raided by the IRS. When we pass that test, and I know we will, then there will be no more reason to prohibit marijuana. Potheads will be granted their freedom of religion!
VIDEO: Hilo marijuana ministry open after federal raid
http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2010/03/14/video-hilo-marijuana-ministry-open-after-federal-raid/
Yesterday I spoke with Richard Lee and he was telling me how he had just added a lecture on the THC Ministry to his classes at Oaksterdam University. I thanked him for adding religion and freedom of religion to his cannabis classes. We both feel very hopeful about our chances for success in November. A lot of people are on our side.
Reverend Lauren Unruh
THC Ministry
Pleasant Hill, Ca
OK, this is off topic, but I thought it was funny, in a sick way,
Florida tries to ban sex with animals after failing to do so last year.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/29/floridas-laws/
“So, just to recap what you can and can’t do in Florida: Get married if you’re gay? Illegal. Adopt a child if you’re gay? Illegal. Marry your cousin? Legal. Have sex with an animal? Also legal.”
Florida pot law,
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4530
Get caught with more than twenty grams of pot in Florida and you are looking at a felony and five years in prison. And this was the state that gave us GW Bush? I smell something and it don’t smell good.
as Prop Hate vote in CA showed. the money will do whatever it takes to stop any threat to their “rent.” threaten the powers that be and expect a full assault. no holds barred, like what the Mormons did undercover to the threat of gays having equal rights.
this won’t happen this time unless the pro legalization forces can effectively counter the PR bs. and i don’t think there is enough experience on how to deal with lying liars. the “usually” rich white men” who like things the way it is, they are the ones collecting the money.
the PR battle of the good old days is the basis for the all out assault. you know, lie, lie, lie, lie and so forth. until the sheeple believe what the Village tells them is okay, wrong and the rest of the “facts of life.”
With the Drug war on Americans started by Nixon, those who have amassed so much power and money, DEA, local and state police, whomever else, will NEVER give up without a fight. they have been fighting us since the Drug War on Americans began under the “pretense” of making a safer America.
the whole war on the “Other” is just an easy divide and conquer strategy the Village uses the keep the Class war going strong. having the middle class fight the poor for the table scraps has been very successful in diverting attention from what the right and rich old white men are doing the rest of America.
What a effing pity, but as i gather the older i get, history is there for us to repeat over and over again.
Learn what? from history! oh please.