On the EDge: Fake news and pot prohibition

April 16, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — You can really blame this one on fake news. Go ahead, I’ll back you up.

Only thing is, this fake news goes back some 80 years to the days before the mass hysteria of the internet, social media and, of course, Fox News.

Nonetheless, that old school fake news – it used to be called “yellow journalism” – sowed the seeds of ignorance that fueled the tumultuous cannabis prohibition that seems to be, thankfully, getting an ignoble lashing. State by state, reasonable people have had enough and moved to legalize, whether for medicinal or recreational purposes.

Those who have been the most vocal opponents of legal cannabis are now among its most ardent supporters.

Former House Speaker John Boehner announced just the other day that he will join the board of directors at Acreage Holdings, which describes itself as “one of the nation’s largest multi-state actively managed cannabis corporations.”

Once one of the staunchest anti-cannabis legalization voices in the House of Representatives, Boehner said in a prepared press release that his thinking on cannabis, “like that of millions of other Americans, has evolved as I’ve learned more about the issue.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, a longtime Republican, announced that he, too, will join the board of Acreage Holdings.

So it’s changing, and even some of the reefer madness proponents are understanding that there are many benefits – from physical and emotional relief to revenue generation – to legalization.

They are understanding that descheduling cannabis can only be a good thing as it becomes available to veterans with PTSD, chronic pain sufferers who are being fed life-threatening opioids and yes, the casual user who will use it to alleviate the day-to-day stresses we all face.

Only the diehards with cultural and societal hangups rooted in the racist and economic reasons for the original cannabis prohibition are hanging onto this losing battle.

That would include Gov. Gary Herbert, the Utah Medical Association and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to mention but a few.

You see, according to recent polls, 77 percent of Utah voters are in favor of legalization of medical cannabis at the very least. As a result, there is great fear among the reefer madness crowd that a measure seeking medicinal legalization will not only make the November ballot but be overwhelmingly approved by voters.

That’s why the stuffed shirts of the UMA, the reddest of the red doctors in one of the reddest states in the Union, came out with a statement criticizing a rather tame green initiative because of fears that legalization of medicinal use would fling open the doors to full-blown recreational use because… well, the kids.

That specious argument has been disproven in states with full recreational legalization, by the way, so instead of worrying about things that do not occur, how about expressing some urgency about better controls over the dangerous opioids out there ruining lives?

Nonetheless, the LDS church has glommed on to the UMA statement and given Herbert a hearty pat on the back, congratulating them both for sustaining the belief that the strongest thing on the Utah menu should be a Mountain Dew served with a side of watery green Jell-o.

This ongoing reefer madness thing can be traced back to 1938 newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and his relationship with the DuPont family.

Hearst had vast timber holdings to produce the raw materials to mill the paper his publications were printed on. Hemp was a great, cheaper alternative to be sure, but there were two problems.

First, Hearst’s friends, the DuPonts, were developing synthetic petroleum-based materials. Hemp just didn’t fit into the equation – especially revenue generation – because there was much more money to be made using petrochemicals. So even though Henry Ford wanted to use hemp products to build his earliest automobiles and fuel them, he had to give way to more traditional means and materials because of the control the Hearsts, DuPonts and other privileged fat cats held at the time.

The second and most insidious reason for the prohibition was Hearst’s racism.

Hearst had an inborn hatred for minorities, which was exacerbated during the Mexican revolution when Pancho Villa relieved him of about 800,000 acres of timberland. It fanned the flames of Hearst’s racism, and as more and more migrants came to work the fields in the United States, he went on the attack.

He claimed they were rapists, thieves, killers, drug addicts – stop me if you’ve heard this somewhere before – who were using cannabis to fuel their violent behavior and turn our women into helpless sexual victims.

Except there was no leap in violent crime, women were becoming the backbone of the pre-World War II military industrial complex and Hearst was off his nut, cavorting with fascists Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, who wrote columns for his newspapers.

But the fake news of the day perpetuated the claims of aimless reefer-induced insanity that was then attached to the blues and jazz singers of the era. This condemnation continued on through the generational chasm of the ‘60s when the cultural shunning expanded to include not only black jazz musicians and migrant workers but the hippies who may have been white but weren’t white enough and who had the temerity to build a counter-culture.

It came to a head during the Richard Nixon administration when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 and lumped cannabis with heroin, cocaine and some other nasty drugs.

Even though science has repeatedly proven otherwise, there are still “those guys” like the UMA, Gov. Herbert and the top officials of the LDS church who have never made it past the reefer madness hysteria or even Nixonian fervor for whatever reason, whether political, spiritual or practical.

This will all change, of course, even among the diehards, after the November initiative passes and subsequent tax revenues are counted.

But that’s what happens when red states go green, and no amount of fake news will ever change that.

There is absolutely no way they will be able to just say no to all that cash.

No bad days!

Ed Kociela is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: edkociela.mx@gmail.com

Twitter: @STGnews, @EdKociela