In the face of recent polls showing that 93 percent of Americans and Utah Democrats, as well as 65 percent of Utah Republicans, support medical marijuana, how are the pot-hating Utah cops supposed to get voters to fear passage of an upcoming Utah 2018 medical marijuana initiative enough to reject it?
Pot Smoking Will Soften Your Penis!
Weber County Sheriff Terry Thompson delivered a slide presentation last Wednesday at a town hall meeting attended by about 60 people at Bonneville High School, warning Utahans about the dangers they face if they approve of policies that 29 other states have already adopted.
Chief among those dangers? Men who smoke marijuana are more likely to experience erectile dysfunction.
Seriously. Utah cops think people suffering from debilitating illnesses are going to pass up an effective non-toxic remedy because men who toke might not be able to get it up.
Never mind the fact that this is no worry to the women who might use medical cannabis. Never mind that there is no conclusive evidence that impotence is a side-effect of male marijuana use. Never mind that even if it were, there exists Viagra, Levitra and Cialis to counteract it.
Instead, I just apply common sense.
How did Bob Marley, Tommy Chong and Willie Nelson end up with 24 children between them if smoking pot turned their trouser blunts into pants pinners?
Anybody with any marijuana experience will tell you cannabis is an aphrodisiac.
Pot Smoking Gives Genius Kid Mental Retardation!
Thompson continued, telling Utahans that marijuana use makes you twice as likely to crash your car (maybe, if you don’t correct for age and gender), suppresses your body’s immune system (sure, that’s why doctors recommend it to AIDS patients), increases the risk of cancer (sure, that’s why doctors recommend it as cancer treatment), psychosis (among people who are predisposed to it), gum disease (sure, if you don’t hydrate your dry mouth and brush your damn teeth), depression (yeah, that’s why they call it a “high”) and acute memory loss (short-term memory loss for frequent tokers that doesn’t affect cognition or processing).
Most egregiously, Thompson said marijuana has no—zero!—medical benefits, to an audience that included the vice president of the Epilepsy Foundation of Utah, who is currently using CBD oil to successfully reduce his daughter’s seizures.
But what do you expect from a cop who says, “[A neighbor] visited with me recently in tears. She’d worked with a 15-year-old who tested just on the borderline of genius, just a great kid. He decided to hang out with the wrong kids and started going down the wrong path… down that marijuana road. Within a year, they couldn’t get this kid to hardly test above a 70 IQ. It was just sad.”
Really, you’re supposed to believe a 15-year-old whose IQ was approaching 140 (borderline genius) smoked pot and in one year was then testing in the 70s (mental retardation approaching 3rd-grader intelligence)?
They must have some way different pot in Utah. It’s so much more compellingly devastating than normal pot that even Utah’s rabbit population can’t get enough of it, at least according to what DEA told Utah legislators in 2015.
Pot Smoking Leads To Heroin Overdoses!
Of course, what slide deck full of Reefer Madness would be complete without the gateway theory?
Riverdale Police Lt. Casey Warren talked about his brother, who died from a heroin overdose, and noted that the drug use started with marijuana.
“He was the smartest one, best looking, best everything, but he made a choice and couldn’t stop. This addiction led to harder drugs, and ultimately, he overdosed on heroin… The hardest thing I had to do was tell my mom and dad their son was gone,” Warren said.
Uh-huh. And every murderous criminal Hell’s Angels biker I’ve ever met started on a kid’s little red tricycle. They made a choice to ride wheeled vehicles and couldn’t stop. This thrill-seeking led to fewer wheels and adding engines, and ultimately, they end up on powerful Harley-Davison motorcycles, terrorizing the community.
Thompson continued with his slide show, peppered with “facts” from the Rocky Mountain and Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas that receive federal money to concoct the worst scaremongering about marijuana in their legal states as possible.
Thompson cited the estimated one percent of all electrical usage in Washington used to grow weed and the environmental impact of illegal grows, which is a weird stat to bring up to condemn legal marijuana.
Final Hit: There’s Pot Smoking Happening In Utah NOW, You Know…
But that fits perfectly with the overall tone of the presentation, which seemed to be built on the assumption that there is no marijuana use going on in Utah now, and legalizing medical marijuana will suddenly introduce this brand-new phenomenon to the Beehive State, which everyone then would use irresponsibly and dangerously.
That was apparent on a slide that asked, ominously, “Do you want your family’s Medical Service Providers (doctors, nurses) on marijuana?” That was followed by a similar list of bullet points asking about pilots, truckers, school bus drivers, hunters, police, EMTs and construction workers on marijuana.
Are they doing that now in Utah? If not, why would these professionals choose to behave so irresponsibly after sick people are allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes? Especially when the initiative being considered bans marijuana smoking and any home grows within 100 miles of a dispensary?
The more states that pass marijuana reforms and the longer the sky doesn’t fall, the sillier and more desperate the cops get as they try to protect the easy arrest stats, asset forfeiture and government grants that come with busting people for weed.