Marijuana is becoming so mainstream that some of its critics are resorting to rather bizarre arguments against it. Two absurd televised attacks in the last week highlight how marijuana prohibitionists are running low on negative things to say about pot.
First, appearing on the Saturday, February 28 edition of Fox & Friends, Dr. David Samadi denounced a January 2015 Scientific Reports study that found marijuana to be a “low risk” drug compared to alcohol, nicotine, heroin and cocaine.
Drawing from the prohibitionist playbook, Samadi disregarded any evidence of pot’s safety and complained that the study sent the wrong message. “They’re using death as a measure to see what’s dangerous and what’s not…coming with this whole thing that pot is safer. Absolutely not. It’s a huge fraud,” said Samadi.
Then he dropped this nugget:
“We’re seeing in Colorado that we had 13 kids that came to the emergency and ended up in the ICU as a result of overdose from marijuana. Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.”
Yes. A doctor actually said “This whole marijuana business” is causing “crack babies” on a televised news program (well, Fox News) in the 21st century.
But Dr. Samadi was not done spouting nonsense. After running down a laundry list of reefer madness propaganda, Samadi added, “Now what I learned about [pot], preparing for this segment, is it affects your heart. It actually causes heart attacks.”
At the end of the segment, after calling medical marijuana “the biggest scam I’ve ever seen,” Samadi angrily challenged doctors to convince him he’s wrong about the dangers of pot via social media. Perhaps you’d like to write the doctor on Facebook.
Two days later, televangelist Pat Robertson had some interesting thoughts on pot, which he shared on his 700 Club show on CBN. (Oh you didn’t catch it? That’s okay. No one else did either.)
Robertson began his anti-marijuana monologue by noting God gave humans “dominion over everything on this Earth. Over…all the plants, all the vegetables.”
Robertson continued, “Cocaine is the product of a vegetable, alcohol is the product of a vegetable, marijuana is a vegetable. And yet, people are enslaved to vegetables,” finally asking rhetorically, “Why would you become a slave to a vegetable? Why? Why would you do it?”
Naturally, Robertson has the simple solution to such stoner slavery – give yourself over to the Lord: “God Almighty can deliver you from the bondage of your addiction. Your slavery to vegetables, He can set you free.”
Gee Pat, we thought we were slaves to an herb. Thanks for the clarification. Looking forward to your homily on the evils of tofu.
