Whitehouse.gov and Cannabis: What the FAQ? Part 1

Obama’s recent bombshell comments on marijuana fired up my curiosity to do a bit more digging. Whitehouse.gov has quite an exhaustive (and highly biased) FAQ section on marijuana. My original intent with this article was to give a general overview and refute any key points that stuck in my mind. However, this FAQ page is a veritable gold mine of skewed “facts” and exceptionally biased information. Maybe it’s time for Whitehouse.gov to re-evaluate some of these canned reefer madness answers given the Commander-in-Chief’s recent comments.

The government loves quoting itself to reinforce its propaganda! Anyway, due to the overwhelming amount of things I have to say about this FAQ, I am going to break it up into installments, otherwise this would be a lengthy piece that would be prohibitively long to read.

In this installment, I’ll discuss one of the FAQ question/answer pairs.

Question: “What is the Federal response to state marijuana initiatives?”

I don’t want to simply cut/paste the text here. You can follow the link above to read more in-depth. Although, in this instance, there just isn’t much to say. It basically amounts to a restatement of the Controlled Substances Act and states that marijuana is still illegal, federally speaking. What is of note, however, is this first two sentences:

“In enacting the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Congress determined that marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance. In 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington state also passed initiatives legalizing marijuana for adults 21 and older under state law. As with state medical marijuana laws, it is important to note that Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime.”

I can’t speak for everyone, but what comes screaming off the page to me is the twice-stated “Congress has determined…” Notice that it doesn’t say that doctors, scientists, researchers or anyone of that ilk have determined anything whatsoever. Congress determined it so. Congress. All it takes to be an elected official is enough people wishing it to be so. Does that make these officials experts on cannabis (or anything for that matter)? No. I don’t say this as a knock against elected officials, but at what point does winning an election magically give you scientific and/or medical authority? I won’t get too political here, because I fully believe that there are reasonable minds as well as crackpots on both sides of that line. But I think it is safe to say that it’s been a long time since Congress enjoyed a positive public rating and/or the confidence of the American people.

In typical government fashion, they offer a non-answer “answer” to the question. It’s basically a cop-out, so that they don’t have to take an official stance on legal weed or have any personal opinions. It does irk me, however, that we have a president who openly admitted to smoking weed (often) as a young man and a whole bevy of congresspersons who have also used cannabis (whether or not they will admit it), yet almost none of them will stand up and say, “that’s just not true” when the DEA propaganda mill churns out its “facts.”

What is that saying, ‘All evil needs to thrive is for good people to do nothing’? I’m paraphrasing, but I think you get my meaning.

Here’s the 2nd installment of “Whitehouse.gov and Cannabis: What the FAQ?”