Satirical news slingers have embarked on a mission to mess with the minds of a hopeful drug culture by publishing a slew of phony reports aimed at conning citizens into believing marijuana is about to become legal.
Most recently, a satirical news site called NewsBuzzDaily published an article under the headline “Texas to Permit Medicinal and Recreational Marijuana Use!” which tells the erroneous tale of Governor Rick Perry signing legislation to allow the use of marijuana in the Lone Star state at the beginning of the year.
“Texas Governor Rick Perry will be signing a new bill into law, legalizing medicinal and recreational use of marijuana for adults ages 21 or older. Bill HB 2412 will go into effect January 1, 2015. Texas is the first southern state to legalize any recreational drug. The state of Texas is expected to profit $50 million in tax revenue from marijuana sales. A state tax of 11 percent will be implemented on sales. In addition to the profit in tax revenue, with the legalization of the drug Texas is expected add more than 5,000 job openings ranging from farmers to dispensary agents,” according to the report.
Unfortunately, not only is this story a load of crap, but the majority of Texas lawmakers are nowhere near convinced that legalizing the leaf for medicinal or recreational purposes is something Texas should be doing. Earlier this year, Governor Perry told CNN’s Candy Crowley that the State of Texas has no plans to entertain the concept of legalized marijuana, while adding that measures to decriminalize pot possession should be explored.
“[A]fter 40 years of the war on drugs, I can’t change what happened in the past. What I can do as the governor of the second largest state in the nation is to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization and keeps people from going to prison and destroying their lives, and that’s what we’ve done over the last decade,” said Perry.
Despite the governor’s pro-decriminalization position, the Lone Star state is still hell bent on punishing its pot offenders severely. Up until recently, prosecutors were looking at putting 19-year-old Jacob Lavoro in prison for the rest of his life over charges involving the posession of pot brownies. Lavoro’s charges have since been reduced, but there is still a distinct possibility he could spend the next 20 years of his life in prison.
Therefore, while we do hate being the bearers of bad news, Texas has not legalized marijuana, nor does it have any bills currently pending in the legislature that could make this happen in the near future.
It is important to be able to distinguish satire from reputable news sources: The Onion, Huzlers, Empire, The Daily Currant, The News Nerd, and The National Report are just some of the websites known for publishing bogus information.
